Mixed With the Lightning of Slaughter
by Dayadhvam
Summary: He keeps dreaming of a future gone to hell, but it's irrational to imagine that his visions could actually happen, right? Or so Sasuke thinks… but there are too many coincidences that prevent him from dismissing his dreams as mere illusions. Timetravel.
1. prologue: unreal images

**Title:** Mixed With the Lightning of Slaughter  
**Author:** Dayadhvam  
**Rating/Pairings:** PG-13. Gen.  
**Summary:** He keeps dreaming of a future gone to hell, but it's irrational to think that his visions would actually happen, right? Or so Sasuke thinks... but there are too many coincidences that prevent him from dismissing his dreams as mere illusions. Timetravel.  
**Notes:** I've always been fond of AU and timetravel stories; there's so much potential in exploring how things could have gone differently. The story diverges from canon starting at Ch. 172 ("Returning Home"), when Tsunade heals Sasuke's Tsukuyomi trauma. The title of the fic comes from Algernon Swinburne's poem "Dolores." Warning for inordinate use of italics. :P Naruto is not mine.

* * *

**prologue - unreal images**

"He'll wake up soon," Tsunade said, her hand resting on Sasuke's forehead.

**oOo**

_Smoke, and fire, and bloodbloodblood sliding down his arm in thin rivulets. All burnt to ashes, and now just a flood of red light, red brightness that explodes from the body on the ground—_

_Even when the dobe's dead, Sasuke thinks numbly, he's _still_ chasing after him, and the Kyuubi's chakra reaches out to him and wraps around—_

**oOo**

His head felt like someone had dragged it upon a layer of fiery embers a hundred times over.

_Where—Itachi? But I—_

_No, he—used Tsukuyomi on me, the massacre—_

_—but I killed him, how was he there in Tsukuyomi—_

Ridiculous. He'd killed Itachi, so it couldn't be that Itachi was alive.

Couldn't be.

Wait. No, he hadn't killed Itachi yet. Not yet. He hadn't been strong enough. Why had he thought he killed Itachi?

His head was pounding, and he felt a hand on his forehead. _What…?_ Then he felt the channel of healing chakra, and suddenly the headache and pain seeped away so slowly and effortlessly that his frantic thoughts faded in relief and for a moment he did not think of anything but the strange comfort of his blank mind.

The bed was soft—_bed_? Where was he?

_—sweat-soaked, blood-stained ground—a broken, smashed-up hallway—_

As he opened his eyes—

"_Sasuke_!" Impossibly bright and exuberant, and _no, how is he still speaking, he's_ dead—

Strangled sob. "Sasuke-kun…" Light and soft and sounding like she was going to cry—

Somewhere, in the muddled mess of his mind, Sasuke thought, _Ah, they're here, so Itachi and that shark-nin aren't here. Good. But I didn't kill Itachi. Damn it._

But over that came the sudden overwhelming rush _no no they can't be here they're dead dead dead—_

_—she's slumped, skewered through the heart, and_ he_—he's bloody and not moving and why the fuck did he have to come chasing him now, why didn't he stay in Konoha away from the Akatsuki—_

He tensed his muscles and, in a convulsive gesture, sprang from the bed—someone gave a sharp, high cry of surprise—and was on the other side of the room before anything else could happen, before the others could move to stop him. His left leg crumpled when he landed—he let out a strangled gasp, awkwardly leaning on his knee. His hand went instinctively for his weapons pouch—it wasn't there?—he snapped his head up, breathing heavily with exertion. His body was this _weak_? This—his vulnerability—it was _appalling_.

Four other people in the room. Sasuke couldn't gather himself together at first, saw blotchy yellow and pink and dark brown—

They swam into focus. A stern-looking blonde woman who stared at him with narrowed brown eyes _who's that—Godaime of course, wait what_ and the dark-haired woman behind her, and—

"_Teme_!" Again that voice, loud and growling. "What do you think you're _doing_? You've been knocked out for ages, don't jump around like that and act all cool! You're scaring Sakura-chan!"

Sasuke snapped his head around abruptly and stared wide-eyed at them, not speaking. _Sakura_? The girl's green eyes full of concern and a tinge of wariness, and her red dress—but she was supposed to be older, _she looks older than that—drawn face and grimly set jaw and where are her gloves?—how is she here_? And the boy's shining blond hair, outrageously orange jumpsuit—here Sasuke backpedaled. Orange jumpsuit?

But that wasn't unusual, the idiot always wore that—_there's orange in the clothes, but now there's black as well, and his face has lengthened and matured, whiskers stretching on his cheeks—_

"Don't rile him up," said the blonde woman snappishly. "He's been caught in doujutsu for a month—_don't_ taunt him, Naruto!"

Sasuke flinched at the name unconsciously, shoved as it was into his face. No, the boy couldn't be Naruto, _can't be Naruto uh yes he is Naruto no he's dead this isn't him this is impossible so it can't be_—and his mind was floundering—no other ninja would have such terrible taste in clothes—but he'd seen him ripped apart, so plainly someone else _did_ have such terrible taste in clothes.

A strange twisting gush of hate welled up in him. No one alive could _dare_ have the same taste in clothes as Naruto. Because—because—no one else could be that _stupid_, of course.

"—and don't make any sudden movements, he might still be dazed from the jutsu—"

"Yeah, well—what's with the _look_ on your face, Sasuke? Hey _hey_!"

"Shut up," gritted Sasuke, ignoring the blond's indignant "_What_?" _This is genjutsu, this is genjutsu_, he told himself coldly, but even though it must be genjutsu and he really ought to be thinking of ways to escape, he looked down and away from them. Couldn't look at them.

And how had they plucked this scene out of his mind? Because they'd done a terrible job with it—because it wasn't going as he remembered it, not at all—

His mind went blank. The way he remembered it? There was nothing to remember. And Naruto and Sakura were just being annoying—

—there was, _yes yes_ there was something to remember. And they were not real. _They are not real._

"Sasuke-kun." He didn't look up; it was the girl speaking. "_Sasuke-kun_. It's fine, Tsunade-sama healed you. You—you can relax now, all right? We're here for you."

"—and stop looking at me and Sakura-chan like you're going to kill us, and anyway that man isn't here—"

That man. He'd _killed_ him. Why did they keep bringing that _up_?

He snapped his head up so quickly his neck hurt, hands in a seal. "Kai!" he snapped, and his Sharingan whirled, because he _could_ and _would_ break through this fucking genjutsu, and he glared and glared. He was going to _kill_them, the people behind this—eviscerate them from the hollow of their necks to their navels and watch them die slowly, painfully. He wasn't a damn sentimental _fool_. "You can't be _here_," he said, breathing vehemently. His chest was beginning to pain him. "You're _dead_. I saw you _die_. You think I can't see through genjutsu as stupid as this? Whoever you are, you're as idiotic as they always were."

In the next moment, as he saw their stunned eyes and gaping mouths and dumbstruck faces, the feeling of exhaustion crept over him, chakra draining out of him, and he only had time to think _I'm so weak this is pathetic so so pathetic_ before his body failed him.

Two voices of horror as he collapsed to the floor—"_Sasuke_!"

His vision went black.

* * *

The prologue is meant to set up the initial memory backlash Sasuke has—before his mind represses them, that is, so for the next few chapters afterwards you won't see much of the future. Sasuke isn't about to realize that it was actually timetravel. Yet.

The thing with most timetravel stories is that once the time traveler's future mind takes over the old body, the minds combine together in a generally seamless way, with an occasional "and he remembered the person dying and was sad" or something like that. I wanted to show exactly how the present memories clash with the future memories in real time, because that's one of the central conflicts in time travel, imho. It's not all "okay, I'll save everyone this time and make the world a better place" (Can you imagine Sasuke saying that? XD That would be Naruto's line.). It's more "wtf is going on, I don't understand."

And the source of the fic title is from:

_When, with flame all around him aspirant,  
Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands,  
The implacable beautiful tyrant,  
Rose-crowned, having death in his hands;  
And a sound as the sound of loud water  
Smote far through the flight of the fires,  
And mixed with the lightning of slaughter  
A thunder of lyres._  
—Algernon Swinburne, "Dolores"

("The lightning of slaughter" is totally Chidori.)


	2. 1: and wake up to the world

**1 - and wake up to the world**

He could hear the murmur of subdued voices nearby through the drifting cloudiness in his mind. And something was slowly dripping on his arm.

"… don't cry, Sakura-chan. Tsunade-baa-chan'll look at him, she'll fix him…"

"But—you heard what Tsunade-sama said—how could this _happen_?" Sakura there, still sounding dazed and a little hysterical. "He thought we were _dead_. What—what kind of jutsu does that?—and Tsunade-sama couldn't figure out what was wrong, and she said the jutsu might've completely ruined his sanity—"

"Sakura-chan, don't say that." Naruto's voice cut in sharply.

He shifted his head a little—his teammates stopped talking. "… Naruto?" he said, weariness creeping into his voice even as he did his best to conceal it. "Sakura?... Say something."

Silence.

Then Sakura started sobbing even more, and now he could tell that her tears were what was dripping onto his left arm—was she going to stop crying sometime soon? On his other side, Naruto grabbed hold of his hand so tightly that Sasuke winced. "_Sasuke_," he said in relief, and Sasuke wondered at the quietness of Naruto's voice. Some disapproving nurse had probably told him to keep his voice down.

"I'm fine," Sasuke mumbled tersely. "Don't cry, you'll turn into a waterfall."

He'd meant Sakura, because his arm was getting ridiculously wet, but Naruto bristled slightly. "Well, _I'm_ not crying," he said bluntly. Sasuke heard Naruto rub his hand across his face before letting it fall down. The back of Naruto's hand brushed against Sasuke's arm briefly, and he could tell that it was a little damp. Strange.

"Whatever," Sasuke said, and tried to sit up.

Sakura flung her arms around his neck and continued crying. "We—" she said into his shoulder "—Tsunade-sama said that the jutsu might last even after you woke up, and that the effects might not go away—we thought you'd lost your mind_ forever_—Sasuke-kun!"

His shoulder was slowly growing more and more soggy. He cracked his eyes open. Everything was blurry at first, before his vision sharpened and cleared. Sakura's pink hair was tickling his ear, and he thought about pushing her away, but decided not to; he felt too exhausted to do so, he rationalized, and anyway she'd only cry more, which would be annoying. He looked to the right and saw Naruto. There was a drawn, tired look on his teammate's face, but he saw Sasuke looking at him and grinned, and the tiredness vanished as though it had never been there.

Sasuke looked back levelly. "How long have I been out?" he asked.

Naruto put his hands behind his head. "Er," he said. "A few weeks, and then ero-sennin and I brought Tsunade-baa-chan back—" he puffed up a little "—and she healed you and you woke up about two hours ago. But you fainted again."

Sasuke narrowed his eyes. "I did not _faint_."

The grin grew wider. It seemed wider and brighter than any other grin Sasuke had ever seen on Naruto's face. "Sure, sure, whatever you like."

"Dobe."

"Teme!"

"Oh, you two," grumbled Sakura, but she didn't sound particularly annoyed. She drew back from him, her crying evidently spent. She was smiling as she wiped at her face. "We'll have to call Tsunade-sama, Naruto," she said. "Sasuke-kun, Tsunade-sama wanted to give you a check-up when you woke, all right?"

"If she insists." Sasuke had never liked the hospital. It was too white for his liking, too unspoiled and pristine, mocking him mercilessly with its immaculateness when he looked around. The sooner he got out, the better. If that meant he had to suffer through check-ups…

"Yeah, yeah," Naruto said, still smiling. "Don't upset Sakura-chan, teme. You're so dumb sometimes." He stood up and darted out of the room; Sasuke heard Naruto's feet hitting the floor as he ran to call the blonde woman back. ("_Tsunade-baaaaa-chan_!")

"Tsunade-sama?" he asked.

Sakura smiled. "She's the new Hokage, Sasuke-kun. One of the Sannin, and she's an amazing medic-nin too. She's—just so strong!" The admiration was clear in her voice.

"Godaime Hokage? I see." Sasuke watched Sakura as she stood up and rearranged the flowers on the little table next to the bed; they were fresh, and he wondered how often she'd stopped by. "What happened?"

Sakura paused, an unnatural stillness in the way she stood and clasped the vase in her hands. Sasuke frowned.

"What do you mean, what happened?" she asked quietly.

"What happened when I woke up?" he said. He did not remember waking up at all—searching back into his mind, he could not find anything, nothing but blankness and the lingering impression of red. But that was all.

And—yes, and_ Itachi_.

_Him_.

It was only the faint throbbing in his mouth that made him realize he'd just bit his tongue.

"Oh," said Sakura. "You don't remember?"

"Would I be asking if I did?" he answered acidly.

"Ah." Her words sounded halting and forced. "You—thought it was genjutsu and said we were dead. That's all."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "I see." She didn't want to talk about it, then. Either way—it probably didn't matter._That man used Tsukuyomi on me_, he thought. _He_— "I suppose it was the effect of the jutsu, then," he said, his voice a little strained.

"Yes, that's what Tsunade-sama concluded."

He curled his hands into fists. All he had done—the time spent training, waiting for the opportunity—and he'd still been so _weak_, tossed about like some useless, lifeless doll and dismissed as though he didn't matter. _I lack hatred_, he remembered bitterly. _That's what he said to me._

"—let's see how good your eyesight is."

Bandages around his forehead, the rush of adrenaline through his body, and—suddenly right next to him, right past him, and he cannot help his mouth curling into a strangely gratified smile—

"Sasuke-kun!"

He gave a small jerk and turned toward Sakura. She was looking at him quizzically. "I asked if there was anything you needed," she said. "Are you all right?"

Sasuke turned back to look at the opposite side of the room. "I'm fine," he said curtly. He was not about to tell anyone that his brother's jutsu was still strong—strong enough to affect him even now and taint his senses. That would only show his weakness.

When he glanced down, the palms of his hands were bleeding at the places where his nails had dug into his skin.

**oOo**

The new Hokage pronounced him in good condition overall, although Sasuke had caught her eyes flickering toward his hands with a flash of scrutiny. "Rest for a few more days, and then you can get out of the hospital," she said briskly.

Sasuke nodded. Naruto laughed and slung an arm around Sasuke's shoulders, nearly making him fall out of his bed. "Usuratonkachi!" he snapped. "Watch what you're doing!"

Naruto only tightened his grip. _Damn it, is the idiot trying to strangle me_? "Just wait!" he crowed. "I learned a brand new jutsu, I'll bet you can't do better than it!"

"Don't be so loud, Naruto," Sakura said wearily. "Tsunade-sama, I heard you talked to Lee-san too…"

"You learned a new jutsu," Sasuke said to Naruto with a deliberate slowness, and even Naruto could sense the mockery, responding with a glare. "How does it work? You drive people insane by talking and chattering away all day?"

Naruto looked disgruntled. "No! Ero-sennin taught it to me! And I don't chatter all day!"

"Yes, you do. Idiot."

"Hey!—"

"—And if it's_ that_ pervert teacher of yours, then all you could have learned were peeping techniques."

"I did _not_! It's a fighting technique."

"If you count running away from women as a _fighting_ technique," Sasuke muttered. "Pfft. When did _you_ become his apprentice?"

"Huh?" His teammate's face was clouded with something like surprise. "I don't think I'm his apprentice, because I haven't actually signed a contract with him yet, right?"

Sasuke looked away. For some reason, he'd assumed Naruto was officially Jiraiya's apprentice. Strange. And the new jutsu, too. He pictured a ball of wildly spinning chakra—_where did that idea come from_? He shrugged. "What's your new jutsu, then?" he said, and smirked. "I doubt it could beat my Chidori."

_Rasengan_! he was screaming as he came closer, and the marks on his face were very thick and his eyes were shockingly red, and Sasuke could hear the sound of birds chirping very loudly—

He blinked.

"It's called Rasengan!" Naruto said, a grin splitting his face.

The world tilted dangerously for a moment before it settled back in place.

_I shouldn't have known that_, Sasuke thought numbly, and stared at Naruto.

Naruto's words floated into his ears as though there were some nebulous, hazy mist between the two of them. "—and you know what? My Rasengan can _so_ beat your Chidori! Besides, your Chidori's obnoxiously loud."

"You're one to talk," Sasuke said rather snidely, although he couldn't summon up the usual bite as he tried to regain his poise. He had never been as glad for Naruto's curious brand of obliviousness as he was then.

Still. Hah, he was calling Chidori obnoxiously loud, had the idiot ever looked at _himself_?

Anyway—maybe Naruto had been blathering about his new jutsu to him when he was unconscious—he knew that sometimes even people in comas could retain the memories of what had been said to them while they were incapacitated. Yes, that was probably it.

And incapacitated—it rankled him, that he'd been uselessly lying in a bed for so long. The image of red-eyed Naruto must be from Tsukuyomi—_Tsukuyomi_, and his mouth thinned to a line. "I'll have to fight you sometime then."

Naruto was smiling, but he also looked a little perplexed, as if he'd sensed the bitter seriousness in Sasuke's words and couldn't figure it out. "Yeah, we can fight after you get out, and I'll win! And then you'll have to buy me ramen!"

"Really," Sasuke said. "As if that's going to happen." He smirked. "Dead last."

"Shut up, teme!—"

"—I've never thought of myself as inferior to you—not even once!"

For a moment Sasuke wanted to snap, "Don't be delusional, as if you'll ever be as good as me," and then he realized that the voice had definitely been Naruto's, but Naruto hadn't actually said that, and instead of responding to his teammate with a smirk or another insult, he brought his hands up to his forehead. Obviously there was something wrong if he was imagining voices now.

"Was I given sedatives?" he asked slowly. The medicine, maybe it had had some hallucinogens in it—Itachi was strong, but Sasuke couldn't think he was strong enough to mimic Naruto's voice as well as that. Itachi didn't know Naruto well enough to do that kind of thing. _He_ wasn't Naruto's teammate. Sasuke was.

(And why had Itachi wanted Naruto? Why Naruto, and not him? He was his _brother_, he should've been the one Itachi was after.)

"Er, no medicine—I don't think so. Why?" Naruto sounded confused. "Hey, hey, do you need any?"

Sasuke rubbed his forehead and let his hands fall away. "Like I'd take anything from you," he retorted.

"Sasuke-kun, are you feeling okay?" Sakura had broken away from her conversation with Tsunade near the door and was looking at him.

He grit his teeth. "I'm _fine_," he said with irritation. In an effort to make them stop asking about his well-being—_I am fine, I am not a whimpering little fluffy_ bunny, _damn it_—he quickly dredged up another topic. What had they been talking about?—oh, that. "I heard you mentioning Rock Lee," he said. "What's happened with him?"

Naruto had his usual baffled face at the change in subject. Sakura's face fell. "Oh," she said, and stopped as though she didn't want to keep explaining.

Tsunade continued for Sakura. "There's a chance of recovery, if he agrees to undergo surgery," she said, setting down the facts without mincing words. "However, the rate of success is only fifty percent. If it fails, he dies. It's as simple as that."

"Poor Lee-san," Sakura said, her voice quiet with gloom and—Sasuke thought he could almost sense anger.

"Fuzzy Eyebrows?" Naruto's voice was a jarring contrast to Sakura's. "Does that mean he can't be a ninja anymore?"

"Isn't that obvious?" said Sakura darkly.

Sasuke knew he should feel more about the situation, but for some reason he was only vaguely bewildered instead. Why were they making such a big deal out of it? Was there any need to question the outcome? "That's ridiculous," he said. "He'll be shinobi again."

"Only if he agrees to the surgery," said Tsunade, who had a crease between her eyebrows as she watched Sasuke.

Sasuke shrugged. "He will," he said, tossing the words off almost carelessly. "He can fight, so the surgery will succeed."

"… Sasuke-kun, I think it's the other way around. If the surgery succeeds, he'll be able to fight again," Sakura pointed out, looking a little concerned.

"I thought he was already up and able to fight," said Sasuke, frowning. He went back over what he'd just said—wait, it _was_ the other way around, was it?—

They were all staring at him now. "Fuzzy Eyebrows is still on crutches in the hospital, Sasuke," Naruto said. "He can't really _fight_ now, if that's what you're saying."

_But_, Sasuke wanted to say, _I heard that he was on active duty from Kabuto_—

—_What? Kabuto_? Wasn't he that one traitor to Konoha?

_That's funny, coming from you_, said a little voice.

Sasuke shook off the cold feeling creeping up his spine. "Hn," he said dismissively. Everything was muddled, and they were only making it worse—of course they would. Too much talking—it was cluttering up his mind.

"Anyway—I'm going to go to sleep now," he announced, a little too loudly and stiffly for his own liking.

"Huh. You're so bossy, practically ordering us out of the room like that," Naruto said, and punched Sasuke lightly in the shoulder. "Prissy princess Sasuke."

He glared.

Naruto stuck out his tongue.

Sasuke resisted the urge to pull on Naruto's tongue and see what would happen.

"Baka," Sakura muttered, grabbing Naruto and dragging him toward the door. She stopped and bowed to the Hokage. "Thank you, Tsunade-sama," she said, smiling brightly. Then: "Have a good rest, Sasuke-kun!"

"Yeah, be ready for me to make you lose!" (Sasuke narrowed his eyes at this.)

"_Naruto_!" Sakura snapped at him. And they were out, now.

Tsunade still remained standing there, and Sasuke wanted to put something between them—anything, to block the critical, considering look she was giving him. He bristled a little.

She turned to leave, but stopped in the doorway. "Uchiha, don't go around fighting others now just to satisfy yourself," she said. "You're in the hospital, and I will not stand for obsessive training or scuffles, understood?" Her eyes narrowed threateningly.

"Yes, Hokage-sama," he muttered grudgingly.

She nodded. "You're lucky, you know," she said suddenly, and her face softened slightly. "You have good friends." Tsunade didn't wait to see or hear his response, and the door shut with a soft _click_ behind her.

He stared at the closed door, then snorted and fell back, lying sprawled on the bed and looking up at the hospital ceiling. The ceiling was spotlessly white, too sanitary—

Sasuke blinked and stared, because he could have sworn that the ceiling had been covered with a sheen of speckled red in that instance, and there was the tangy scent of blood that lingered—

—but no, the ceiling was still the way it always was, unmarked and unsullied, and the air smelled of the hospital's sharp cleanliness.

He rolled onto his side, closed his eyes, and tried to dismiss the vague images and voices that had flitted into his mind and out. They would probably go away after a while.

And Sasuke ignored the quiet sensation nagging at him, the feeling that the world did not seem to quite match his expectations, expectations that were themselves strangely fractured and divergent. He turned his thoughts inward and focused on one thing, the one thing in his mind that was unchanging and permanent, and he felt the rage churning in his body.

Red and black pinwheel eyes, and the cool, composed voice.

_You lack hatred_.

* * *

I have deliberately decided not to italicize most of the future flashbacks, to show how mixed in with his present perceptions they are. :)

"—let's see how good your eyesight is."  
Bandages around his forehead, the rush of adrenaline through his body, and—suddenly right next to him, right past him, and he cannot help his mouth curling into a strangely gratified smile—  
-**Ch. 383** ("The Epilogue, and the…")  
_Rasengan_! he was screaming as he came closer, and the marks on his face were very thick and his eyes were shockingly red, and Sasuke could hear the sound of birds chirping very loudly—  
-**Ch. 232** ("Valley of the End")  
"—I've never thought of myself as inferior to you—not even once!"  
-**Ch. 175** ("Naruto vs. Sasuke")


	3. 2: ghosts of words and dreams

**2 – ghosts of words and dreams**

"Hey, _you_! Get back here now—you're supposed to sign in, you know!"

Naruto skidded to an inelegant halt, barely managing to keep himself from running into the wall, and looked back at the plainly annoyed hospital receptionist. "You know who I am, why can't I just go in?" he yelled down the corridor.

The next moment he knew, he was being frogmarched back to the desk. "Rules are rules," the woman said crisply. "And write _neatly_, boy."

Naruto tried hard to suppress a scowl at the cool hostility in her voice. "I'm not a boy!" he said, and rapped his hitai-ate loudly—in doing so, he stopped paying attention to his signature, which started out acceptably legible and ended up looking like a sorry, bedraggled blob of ink. "I'm _shinobi_, you bet your life on that!"

She didn't deign to reply to him; she only pursed her lips critically and gave him a sharp, dismissive, _behave yourself now_ look. As she turned away from him to the next person in line, her attitude switched drastically from "happy smile off" to "happy smile on." "Good afternoon, Masuda-san!" she exclaimed, nodding deferentially at the elderly man. "Here to see your wife, as usual? The doctor says she's doing much better…"

_Not like this is anything new_, Naruto grumbled to himself as he weaved his way through the hospital corridors. And anyway, he didn't have to bother thinking about it now. (_Not now, because he had his precious people, and that was all that mattered_.) He remembered Gaara and his madness, Gaara and his twisted, terrible life philosophy. _I could have turned out like that_, he sometimes reminded himself, and shivered at the idea.

In a way, he was almost paradoxically glad most people didn't like him because of the Kyuubi. Just the Kyuubi, that was all it had ever been—and what he had to do, then, was to work through it, make people see past the demon seal and gain everyone's respect.

_Somehow. Eventually. And I'm definitely going to make it happen—because I'm Uzumaki Naruto—and Uzumaki Naruto is here to_ stay! he cheered to himself.

And besides, _he_ didn't have to be a broody lump about the receptionist. _His_ important people liked him—Iruka-sensei, Sakura-chan, Kaka-sensei, Konohamaru, Sasuke—

Well, in Sasuke's case, tolerated him. But Sasuke didn't like anyone, not really, and didn't tolerate anyone, except for a few.

God, he honestly was _such_ a frigid snob, with a mile-long stick shoved into him and the worst ego ever to boot.

Wait. No. But people loved Sasuke anyway. What kinds of people were stupid enough to keep following the bastard around like that?

(_"He's unconscious," said Tsunade-baa-chan, bending down over Sasuke's limp body, the look on her face troubled. "I'm going to have to ask both of you to leave for a moment."_

_—and then? He won't scream like that anymore, will he? he wanted to ask, but instead he led Sakura out of the room, the two of them silent and numb, and when he turned to look at her he saw a stunned, apprehensive face reflected in her eyes_.)

He turned the corner and caught glimpse of a flash of pink at Sasuke's door. "Sakura-chan!" he shouted gleefully, dashing toward her, and—

"_Naruto_! Don't make so much noise!" Sakura hissed back to him.

"Why can't I—"

"Sasuke-kun's sleeping!" She gave him a none too gentle slap on the shoulder. "And don't wake him up, you're always so loud!"

"Eh, he's sleeping?" Naruto peeked through the open crack of the door, blocking Sakura's attempt to close it—saw the blankets piled on the bed and the dark hair peeking out from underneath. He couldn't help his face breaking into a grin, couldn't help the lightening in his chest._ He's—sleeping—at_ this _time of day? The bastard's so_ weird.

"Naruto, will you move?" Sakura muttered to him in annoyance, but Naruto only stuck his head further into the room and—"Ha, he's so lazy, he's turning into Shikamaru now. He didn't fall over and hit his head, did he?"

Sakura jerked Naruto back by the collar of his jumpsuit—Naruto winced under the roughness of her grip—and carefully closed the door as quietly as she could. Then she finally replied, "That's silly, Naruto, Sasuke-kun's just exhausted. He was sleeping a moment ago when I snuck in and changed the flowers, anyway. I was talking to the nurse who looks after him, and she said that it's hard for him to fall asleep at night, so he's sleep-deprived right now, and—what in the _world_ are you making that face for, Naruto?"

Naruto wiped his face of the grimace he'd had. Mumble mumble. "You have to stalk his nurse too?"

"_Excuse_ me?" Sakura narrowed her eyes.

He hastily covered his tracks—Sakura's punch wasn't something he particularly welcomed. "Er—I said—um, yeah, you talked to his nurse to—today? What'd she say about Sasuke? He's not sick or anything, is he?"

It was a sign of Sakura's absent-mindedness that she didn't look too suspiciously at Naruto's loudly aired concerns for their dark-haired teammate, which usually had about as much a chance of happening as a love confession from Sasuke.

Some of the irritation faded from Sakura's face, and now she only looked tired with worry. "The nurse said that Sasuke-kun can't sleep at night, so he's been asking for medicine for that. And he keeps saying he has headaches a lot, but the doctors can treat that easily." She smiled suddenly, a brilliant smile that made her green eyes shine. "Don't worry, Naruto—Sasuke-kun's okay, he's fine. It's all thanks to you, bringing Tsunade-sama back to Konoha."

"What a complainer—anyway, _I_ don't need to worry about the teme," Naruto muttered petulantly, but felt the heat of embarrassment rise in his face—because of course Sakura-chan was seeing things, thinking he was being fussy like her, even though he_ wasn't_, not at all. "And you know what? He still hasn't said thank you, either!"

Sakura giggled. "Well, sometime I'll tell Sasuke-kun to do that," she said. "Let's go visit Kakashi-sensei now—we might as well, since we're already here." She grabbed Naruto's arm and started down the corridor.

"I guess so—hey, you think Kakashi-sensei's sleeping too?" Naruto leaned in conspiratorially and added, "We could try and look under his mask, you know." He grinned mischievously.

"Don't be ridiculous—as if I'd want to do that right now. It wouldn't be polite to him when he's still recuperating," Sakura said, a scolding tone to her voice, but Naruto saw the edge of her mouth twitch up.

_Hah! All right, it's_ definitely _unmasking Kakashi-sensei time_! "But what if he's already better and just lazing about?" Naruto asked. "And anyway, he's probably reading that perverted book of his—you _know_ he is, Sakura-chan!"

He watched as Sakura weighed the purity of_ Icha Icha_ (or lack thereof) versus the kindness and charity of giving their teacher a break in her mind. "Well—all right, maybe," she conceded finally, her resistance battered down by the sheer potential opportunity.

Naruto punched a fist in the air. "We'll just sneak up on him," he said with unholy glee. "You think he has the beaver teeth—oh—_wait_ a moment, I'm sure I bet Sasuke that he has the really fat lips, we _have_ to have him there too! Damn it." He pouted. "Why doesn't he just wake up?—Uh. Yeah."

The brief bout of humor was washing out of Sakura's face, and Naruto wanted to hit himself. _Sakura-chan must've been thinking that the entire time Sasuke was out because of that bastard brother of his. All that time, and then_—

A rather uncomfortable silence settled between them.

Naruto fidgeted. " 'M sorry," he said quietly, looking away from Sakura.

Sakura didn't say anything at first—then, finally, "What do you mean, you're _sorry_, Naruto?"

"I should've been there, Sakura-chan," Naruto muttered. "I mean—well—I went off with ero-sennin without even coming back to talk to you after—yeah, and you had to look after Sasuke all by yourself. I didn't mean to leave you alone."

Naruto glanced down at the ground and noticed the haphazard trail of scuff marks he was leaving behind him.

Sakura's footsteps were muted, and she said softly, "No. Don't."

"Huh?" He raised his head to look at her again.

"It's fine." She smiled a little, a hesitant, reflective smile. "You were still sort of there, I think. Gai-sensei said you'd promised to come back and find someone who could wake him up. That matters too. Why would I blame you for helping Sasuke-kun?"

_But it's still my fault in the end_, he wanted to say. _Because his brother's after me. After the Kyuubi_. His seal twinged a little, as if in answer to his thoughts.

They kept walking through the hospital corridors together, sunk in an unruffled quiet. Naruto gazed around at the stark whiteness; thought of Sasuke's hair dark against the wall and the way his eyes had flashed red with anger and hatred, because—_You think I can't see through genjutsu as stupid as this_? Sasuke had snapped at them viciously—_Whoever you are, you're as idiotic as they always were_—his voice twisting down into something nearly guttural before he simply crumpled, and the plummeting feeling in Naruto's own stomach, as all the hopes he'd put in Tsunade-baa-chan came crashing down.

In front of Kakashi's door now, and—

_Tsunade-baa-chan_? Yes, that was definitely Tsunade's voice coming from inside—

"—potentially unstable, you know. _You_ woke up perfectly fine, Kakashi, but he was much different—we don't know if Uchiha Itachi manipulated the doujutsu in some particular fashion to make him react like that—"

Naruto and Sakura both stiffened at her words. He felt Sakura grab his hand in a grip tight enough to make his hand hurt; they looked at each other, faces drawn in wariness. _Be quiet_, Sakura told him with all the facial expression she could muster, and Naruto nodded. They hadn't been told enough about anything—Naruto had filled Sakura in on the events at the little roadway inn, as much as he dared say without talking of the Kyuubi, but there were so many holes in the background that frustrated them both, and for god's sake Sasuke was part of their_team_, why weren't they allowed to know?

"—we can't predict what he might do. We'll have to ask him questions about what precisely occurred—he still seems disoriented enough that he probably won't have his gua—" Tsunade stopped speaking.

Then she said, "Come in, I can sense you. Naruto. Sakura." And her voice was edged with the hard bite of steel.

_Oh, damn. The baa-chan doesn't sound happy_.

**oOo**

When Morino Ibiki walked into Sasuke's room, Sasuke was still dazed and drowsy from falling asleep after lunch, rubbing at his eyes and silently cursing the dull ache which had made itself at home in his head, frolicking about sadistically and muddling his thoughts. At the same time, though, Sasuke felt strangely alert, strangely jumpy, and when he blinked, the brightness of the room seemed to ripple faintly.

_Squeak_ went the door—

He whipped around violently and reached back, groping blindly at—wait, there was nothing there.

(It wasn't as though there was a weapon he could use that was strapped to his back, after all. So it was strange, really, that he'd had the sudden instinct to do that.)

He looked up and met the man's eyes—tried to relax, but didn't really succeed. There wasn't much reason to relax in the first place when a torture specialist came to pay you a visit.

Morino Ibiki's mouth tilted slightly into something resembling the parody of a smile. "Uchiha," he said, voice underlined with coolness and the unspoken message, _This is not a request_. "Tsunade-sama gave me permission to see you. I hope you don't mind if I ask you some questions about Uchiha Itachi."

Sasuke froze.

Somehow, he managed to say—very calmly, very curtly—"Fine. What do you want to know?"

He didn't address Ibiki with an honorific, and Ibiki noticed it too, a faint look of amusement in his narrowed eyes. Without any preamble, the man walked slowly over to Sasuke's bed—Sasuke suppressed the urge to twitch at Ibiki's deliberate, heavy footfalls—and stood there looking at him with his hands clasped behind his back.

Sasuke looked back, and tried not to feel intimidated. Ibiki seemed to be doing his best to make Sasuke feel discomfited. He remembered Ibiki from the chuunin exams, making a huge show of revealing his scars and telling them point-blank that some would never be promoted. He hated to admit it, but for one fleeting moment in the first test Sasuke had been afraid. _One of us fails, we fail together, and—oh_ damn _it, the dobe's going to screw us over_, he'd thought, and had clung fervently to the idea that he would still be able to prove his strength somehow.

That was all in the past, though. And—and what did Ibiki want with Itachi?

He laughed bitterly at himself the moment he wondered. His older brother was a fucking S-class missing nin, who'd killed the entire clan and had come back for who knew_ what_. What _for_?

Konoha had better not kill Itachi before Sasuke did.

Words being said, although he wasn't paying attention, and—"I'd like you to start from the beginning," Ibiki said, voice gravelly and detached.

_The beginning? You want the beginning? When Itachi came back to Konoha? When Itachi killed the clan? When_—

"—the beginning of your new training, Sasuke-kun," he says, a sibilant hiss in his voice—

"The beginning?" Sasuke repeated, his voice less strident than he had intended it to be (Because who did speak like that? So very familiar, but…). "Well—" he tripped for a moment over his thoughts, as he tried to think—where were his_ words_, where had they gone?—"I wanted to see Kakashi about training. So—I went to his place. And—"

It was strange, very strange—suddenly he was looking down, looking down and through the fluid shifts and rippling waves of a pool, could see Ibiki, his face and the scars on his face, and the window was latched shut with shadows encroaching upon the windowsill, and his own voice filtered through, sounding high and childish and on the edge of adolescence, and oh god, had he really been this way when he was young—young—when he was_young_?—

—the beginning…

—"I said, this is the _end_, you murderous, traitorous _fuck_—"

"—and that's when I blacked out," he said tonelessly, apathetically, as though he were discussing the recent sale of kunai at the weapons store near the Yamanaka flower shop.

He blinked slowly, very drowsily. He had been talking about…

_I was talking about Itachi_, something said without emotion, like stating a simple, random fact.

_Ah yes, him_.

Itachi… _Itachi_.

A flash of awareness swept through his mind, and he tensed suddenly. "So I told you everything you wanted, right?" he snapped, the words rushed in his irritated confusion.

What in the _world_ had he said to Ibiki anyways? How could he not remember? What the_ hell_—?

The lack of knowledge aggravated his temper and made him even less articulate than he usually was. "Why—_him_—here in Konoha?"

"Unfortunately, I can't disclose that information to you, Uchiha," Ibiki said. There was a calculating, critical look on his face as he gazed at Sasuke. He turned on his heel and nodded to Sasuke. "I'll be speaking with you later," he said, and Sasuke thought he could hear apprehension—a guarded tone in the way he spoke.

Sasuke wanted to protest, to tell him—_this is my brother, my clan's killer, don't_ deny _me this_—but didn't, only watching Ibiki closing the door as he left. There was a quiet ache creeping up behind his eyes, beginning to make itself known to his head, and—

Oh, he would make sure to ask later. For now—so very, very numb all over, and he wants to shut himself down and stop thinking, and maybe then…_because there's two Uchiha left_, he thinks, and this is the only way to fight for his survival, only it means he wants to survive in the first place, does he?—_but I will be the last one standing, no matter what_—more importantly, he cannot let the other one live.

He and the Akatsuki are—

Looking down at his blankets, tracing the stitching with his fingers. _Looks like a cloud_, he thought. _Looks like a cloud_…

The door opened. _Again_.

Sasuke stiffened and glared rather venomously at the nurse who'd just entered; she looked as though she was going to flee right then and there when she met his eyes. "Ah, Uchiha-san," she said, and pasted on a smile. "I'm just bringing in your dinner—try to eat more than last time, okay?"

He stared. "Dinner time?"

"Yes, Uchiha-san, it's dinner time."

Sasuke twisted around abruptly and shot a look out the window. The light was fading—it was getting dark—when had the evening snuck up like this?

How _long_ had he been talking to Ibiki? He could've sworn that he was there only for a span of several minutes, and it had been bright when the man had left—it had been bright, right?

Something like cold lead settled into Sasuke's gut.

He couldn't remember if it'd been bright or dark then at all.

* * *

Chapter title is from Algernon Swinburne's "Felise."

The time travel is beginning to screw with Sasuke's perceptions, as seen from the chunks of time Sasuke's missing. I realize that the transitions may be jarring, but that's exactly how Sasuke's viewing it—at least, as best as I can try to portray it. I hope it worked.

—"I said, this is the _end_, you murderous, traitorous _fuck_—"  
-**Ch. 384** ("Two Roads Diverge")

Naruto and Sakura took up more than I'd originally intended, but I felt it'd be good to see at least some of their views on the incident—and besides, there's more happening out there than just within Sasuke's hospital room. I had trouble writing Naruto, so it'd be great to hear if he's IC or not, and if not, what I can do to improve.


	4. 3: spiraling downwards

**3 – spiraling downwards**

… And he crouches warily, feet braced against the ground and head cocked to one side with an intent expression. The place seems terribly deserted and vaguely resembles the Uchiha compound, only it is all broken walls and crumbled roofs, and ruined in a way that he has never seen it.

But it's very quiet, and he hears nothing—

—no, he does. There's someone running—he can hear the soft fall of footsteps, someone trying to be silent and not quite succeeding, and the tension spreads through his body and he reaches back and draws his chokuto. His eyes narrow and strain—to find, to identify.

And there! He sees a flash of a black cloak, black patterned with red, and a rush of grim acknowledgment ripples through him.

It can only be him—the eldest, the infamous, the one now he most wants to kill. He takes off after the flitting specter, a cold purpose in the way he pushes himself—faster, and faster, and turn here—

He frowns and tightens the grip on his sword, because he has come to a dead end, but his Sharingan told him, tells him, _He was there_.

This is no dead end. There is no such thing as a dead end.

A brush of air against his back—he pivots and turns, his sword angled to attack, and sees him. _Yes_. And the world narrows down to the eyes—it all lies in the eyes, the Uchiha eyes—and the rest darkens to dull gray.

_It was all because of_ you—

—_bastard_.

Said furiously.

Said laughingly.

—Sasuke is staring into Naruto's face, and he stumbles back and falls.

Blood—_blood_—dark, dark crimson dribbling and smearing at the corner of Naruto's mouth, but he only smiles, his red eyes fading to blue, looking at Sasuke knowingly and placidly. He's speaking, but the words blur in Sasuke's ears.

You here—but—why? he asks. Why keep coming after me? You should've stayed away from the Akatsuki—you_idiot_!—and his voice is laced with—he shies away from identifying it—only hears himself saying the words loudly in a garbled rush, and the syllables fracture and break like fragile glass. Something quivers and shatters inside him, and he is screaming (_is he? or maybe it is all in his head, it was always all in his head_).

Once—

_But—why?_

_I don't know_—

You're my best friend. And Naruto is still smiling—

_I hated you._

_—I hate you_.

And Sasuke wants to vomit with the pain, throbbing from his chest to his mind, and—

_no this didn't happen isn't happening_

—when he finally looks again—_there_, all veiled in blackened shadow and bloody red—

**oOo**

—Sasuke woke, desperately trying to catch his breath, and his pillow was soaked with sweat.

He struggled up, sagging against the backboard of his bed—pressed the back of his hand against his eyes, which were stinging wildly—he was _not_ tearing up, he _wasn't_, he wasn't weak like that—and tried frantically to reach back and grasp at the vanishing tendrils of his dream, so strangely, terribly lurid in its impression.

Red. There was lots of red. Blue. There was a little blue. And some yellow, and some pink, and some gray.

But too much red.

"Damn him," he gasped dazedly, although he could not say who _him_ was—_you, and you, and_—suddenly blankness, and everything, everything bound up in love and anger and loathing.

Bastard.

_Why_?

You're my best friend.

But it was all slipping away, like water filtering through a sieve. _Akatsuki. Uchiha. Naruto_. And—he found nothing, yet there _was_ something—something distantly curling in on itself, in a sick twist of denial and oblivion.

It was utterly nothing like the unsettled feeling that had kept him from sleeping well before—_this_, this was—as though it were some exploding tag lurking malevolently in the back of his mind, waiting to ambush him and blow his rationality to pieces, because_ ohfuckdamnit_, his head _hurt_.

He threw off the covers and stumbled out of bed, opening the window. The rush of a small breeze was cool against his flushed skin, and he took in a deep breath. The chilly air seeped into him—permeated through his sweaty skin, down to his lungs, his heart.

Sasuke stayed there, slumped against the windowsill, for some time.

_That_, he thought—

_But it was only a nightmare._

_Stupid_.

He forced his attention away from the splitting headache with some effort. Couldn't be like this—couldn't be _true_—what, no, couldn't give in like this to his mind, his mind, not to Itachi. _No_.

All he had to do, he told himself, was get through it—get through _everything_—and survive.

Yes, he could do that.

After all—he was a genius at surviving.

**oOo**

Sakura rubbed her thumb across the apple, admiring the red sheen of the peel under the bright sunlight. "Good day to you, Toushiro-san!" she called back.

"You too, dear!" the vendor replied cheerfully.

Leaving the fruit stand behind her, she carefully adjusted the bag of apples in her arms. It wouldn't do to accidentally drop it—Sasuke-kun wouldn't like that, not at all. And _ha_!—Ino-pig had to watch over the family flower shop, so there was no risk that she'd come barging in, trying to cling to Sasuke-kun like a limpet.

_For that matter—I wonder if he's awake_. The nurse had been nice and obliging, but what Sakura heard had made her uneasy, even though everything sounded fine. Too fine, because—Yes. Because Sasuke-kun never spoke like he had when he woke up the first time, and right after that he had seemed too suspiciously normal, too _normal_.

And now… In the past few days when she and Naruto had stopped by, when he'd been awake and the hospital allowed visitors, then Sasuke-kun had withdrawn into a stilted half-silence, speaking even less than he usually did. Naruto was still being himself, loud and orange and blustering at times, but something didn't sit right with her.

_Sasuke_ didn't sit right with her.

_Or I'm probably just being silly_, she chided herself. Although Tsunade-sama still wouldn't tell them anything, even after Naruto had yelled and sulked in Kakashi's room.

_It's a pity we're genin; if only we could get clearance on the information or something like that_, she mused._Actually… Tsunade-sama—if I asked to learn some stuff from her, maybe I could find out something_… Sakura squinted against the light as she came to the hospital; she stepped through the doors and strolled to the desk. "Good morning."

The receptionist looked up and saw her; an oddly pleased look appeared on her face. "Oh! Good morning. You're Uchiha-san's other teammate, aren't you? It's good to see he has _some_ well-behaved visitors, at least."

Sakura furrowed her brow as she shifted the bag to one arm and carefully signed her name. _Other teammate? Well-behaved visitors_?

Ah—the receptionist must be thinking of Naruto. Of _course_.

What a pity, then. "Yes, I am. I'm going to keep Sasuke-kun company," she said, pasted on the brightest smile she could manage—and watched the receptionist's expression. "My other teammate's stopping by later, he said so, just to let you know."

"Oh. I see."

The shade of a frown on the woman's face was satisfying to see, and Sakura savored it ever so briefly. So maybe Naruto could be awfully annoying at times, but he'd stopped pranking people, and really, why didn't people like him? She noticed that most people tried to pretend he didn't exist, or if they had to recognize him, treated him grudgingly. He really didn't deserve it.

And—okay, so it _was_ fun to irk people by mentioning Naruto and force him into their faces. (And she hadn't been lying, after all. Naruto had waylaid her right before she'd bought the apples, babbling about ramen with Iruka-sensei and "how he'd definitely come later, Sakura-chan!") There was no reason he should be barred entry to the hospital on the grounds of being irritating—and the receptionist had no business judging any of them, it wasn't as if she knew Naruto the way she and Sasuke-kun did. She didn't know any of them; she didn't know Team 7.

Sakura hefted the bag a little higher in her arms as she murmured a generic by-your-leave to the woman and turned away from the desk. _Anyway, I have to find a nurse—I need a knife and a plate first_.

**oOo**

"Sasuke-kun, do you think I should ask Tsunade-sama if she could teach me some jutsu?"

He glanced at Sakura with a little surprise. She sat next to his bed, patiently peeling apples. He wasn't particularly fond of apples—they were too sweet for his liking, at least—but he hadn't bothered to tell Sakura, when she'd sat down with the plate and knife and the earnest look on her face. Sasuke took some belated comfort in the fact that as rabid a fangirl as she and Ino were—had been, to be honest—at least they hadn't gone so far as to search out every little thing about him and didn't know he preferred tomatoes. Otherwise he'd probably be overwhelmed with boxes of the food every time he was in the hospital.

"What nonsense are you talking about?" he said scornfully, missing the slightly hurt look on Sakura's face—which was swiftly wiped away in a wave of astonishment by what he said next. "You practically call her Tsunade-shishou all the time anyway."

"Wha—but—but that'd be rude of me to do that!" Sakura sputtered. The knife stopped. "I—I'm not her student yet!"

Sasuke raised an eyebrow, but shrugged off the strange jarring sense of displacement. "Then there's nothing that prevents you from asking her," he replied curtly. "You should have more confidence in yourself."

"Well," said Sakura, and there was something in her voice that Sasuke couldn't identify. "I suppose I should."

Sasuke frowned. He'd spoken more sharply than he'd meant to, and if Sakura actually did want to get strong, as opposed to sitting around and doing nothing, at least that was an improvement. He couldn't see her face; her hair was in the way, and her head was lowered over the apples—wait. She was smiling?

The knife started moving. "Thanks, Sasuke-kun. I think I will."

He shrugged and looked away. Far be it from him to fathom what went through the minds of his teammates, who kept coming to visit him when they should have been training, to fuss over him worriedly or otherwise insult him cheerfully.

"… You and me, along with Naruto and Kakashi-sensei… we did all sorts of missions, just the four of us."

"And your point is?" he asked, irritated that Sakura seemed to be talking off on a random tangent of conversation.

"Sasuke-kun?"

"What were you going to say?"

Sakura was looking worriedly at him. "I didn't say anything, Sasuke-kun. Er—what did you think I was going to say?"

He shrugged. "Never mind," he said.

Silence fell in the room again, disturbed only by the sound of knife against apple.

Sasuke stared out the window, a sneaking strain of suspicion working its way through his thoughts. Something seemed—not right—but he couldn't name it. He felt inexplicably tired and bitter—always felt like this when Naruto and Sakura came to visit, as though his mind slipped and faded in sharpness and precision, the brightness of their hair muted in shadow and tinged red in his vision, and sometimes he did not want to look at them at all, his senses revolting with an indefinable aversion.

It was in the way he couldn't remember what had happened with Ibiki (Ibiki, what had he asked? How had he answered? Why did he not _know_? And the way Ibiki had looked at him—he'd dismissed it as just the way the interrogator's mind worked, tried to ignore that he'd had to come in the first place, but there'd been something in his look that made Sasuke wary.). It was in the way he could barely recall the dream he'd had that night—it was in the way he kept thinking there ought to be a blade resting against his back even though he'd never wielded a blade in his life—in the way he was surprised when Naruto and Sakura were there because for some reason it seemed like they shouldn't be—in the way he was uncomfortable lying in the hospital—in the way that he was in Konoha.

Always in Konoha—stuck here. Stuck here, and doing nothing.

The afternoon sun was shining brightly, and he squinted against the light. _To be out of this place_…

_Get out and find him_.

Something abruptly surfaced in his consciousness. What do you see with your Sharingan?—

_I see you. Dead._

_This_—

He involuntarily flinched, an almost unnoticeable movement. That had been Itachi's voice—Itachi, but…

Just Sakura peeling apples, and no one else around.

He bit down on his lower lip in anger and frustration, and tasted his blood. Ridiculous, that he still suffered from the echoes of Tsukuyomi. (Must be, had to be. Had these effects happened the first time? He didn't remember; he didn't quite want to know. He remembered a spotlessly white hospital room, hair plastered against his forehead slick with rain, and a floor still stained faintly red—and it was more than he wanted to remember.)

He'd promised to kill Itachi—had been looking forward to it, and maybe then the clan would—could—might, finally, even rest without its murderer roaming free and unfettered. Somewhere inside him, he'd anticipated the moment fervently, obsessively—his goal, his _end_.

But now, that his older brother should turn away from him, turn away from _their fight_, their fight alone, and instead go after his own _teammate_—

A _stupid_ teammate, who was loud and annoying and graceless, who always needed Sasuke to watch out for him, the dead last at the academy, and yet—

Why—_him_—here in Konoha? he'd asked Ibiki, and—"Unfortunately, I can't disclose that information to you, Uchiha," but why—it was Naruto, he knew it was Naruto—

_I have absolutely no interest in you right now_, instead of maybe, perhaps—"You've become strong," Itachi says to him with a bloodied mouth, and—

Sasuke recoiled away from the image—because Itachi had not said that, had ignored him, had considered him practically _nothing_. To become strong—

But who had become stronger? Naruto had somehow managed to keep going in the Forest of Death, had drawn inhuman strength from somewhere deep inside him and beaten the giant snake into the ground, and later against Gaara—the chakra, that chakra, and _how did he do it_? And Sasuke—weak and helpless, watching Sakura slowly squeezed to death by sand, watching Naruto summon the giant toad and scream defiance—and himself, doing_nothing_ and watching uselessly, the very picture of powerlessness and failure.

In those moments, Naruto seemed so terribly far away and unreachable in the distance, and all Sasuke could ever do—following him, looking at his back—

—_and either way a Uchiha is going to die, but he does not care for such technicalities—does not care for such niceties_, and he glares into Sharingan eyes—

—into a demon's eyes, "—even more sinister than my own—not at all unlike what I once saw in a certain—"

—looking at his back, and watching red blossom slowly, gently across black and orange—

—the _fuck_, he's _here_—and his_ back_—

"Sasuke-kun, would you like some apples?"—

_Crash_!

When his vision cleared, he was gripping the bed sheets so hard his knuckles had lost their color, and Sakura was picking herself up gingerly near the door. Her green eyes were wide and astonished in a face as white as chalk. "Sasuke-kun!" she cried. "You—what's the matter? Sasuke-kun—don't _look_ like that!—"

Distantly, Sasuke heard the door open, but over that could only hear the rushing in his ears, could feel the heat, the _pain_ in his head, and _it was all because of you_—

"Hey, what the _hell_, teme?—"

He swung his legs out of bed, head still bowed.

—_who_? But only blankness, a dead end, and—

(_There is no such thing as a dead end_, his nightmare whispers to him like a benediction.)

"Oi, get back in bed! You shouldn't be running around like that! You're still recovering!"

He raised his head and saw Naruto in the doorway.

_I hated you_, all bitterness and brokenhearted terror rising in his throat, and he fought back the urge to gag.

"—and"—Naruto stopped speaking, blinking at Sasuke. "Teme—stop staring at me like that!"

Sasuke straightened up slowly, trying to obliterate the turbulent flood of sensations that battered at his head. "Let's have our fight now, Naruto," he said, and hated himself for the way his voice wavered.

Naruto looked stunned, then snorted and crossed his arms. "Don't be stupid," he said. "I'm not supposed to fight with hospital patients."

The condescension Sasuke thought he heard in Naruto's voice infuriated him, and for a passing moment he couldn't even articulate a single word through the tension in his jaw. He gritted his teeth. "_Now_," he repeated. He couldn't follow the roiling mass of thoughts in his mind, only that curious mix of anger and hatred—toward whom, he didn't know. But _Naruto_—so easy to despise him, him so hapless and yet still catching up to Sasuke—and _he_was Itachi's focus, the dead-last that he was.

The damned stubborn _fool_—and Sasuke's eyes hurt madly with the strain.

You _idiot_! screaming, screaming somewhere within him, and he turned on himself and shut the words out savagely.

"Sasuke! Stop fooling around!"

"Afraid, scaredy-cat?" Sasuke snapped, and spat the words like vitriol.

Something hardened in Naruto's blue eyes then, confidence and indignation all wrapped up together. "Fine then," he said. "If you _really_ want to fight me." He was smiling, baring his teeth with what seemed like exhilaration.

"Stop it, you two!" Sakura's voice rose sharply. "You're both acting silly, just cut it out!" But she was staring at Sasuke, at the juncture of his neck and shoulder—at the blackened seal, the curse mark, and something trembled in her voice.

"Come on," Sasuke said harshly, his words rushing out in a single exhale of breath as he jerked his head toward the door.

He walked out, Naruto right behind him, and the sound of their steps echoed heavily in the air.

* * *

The first scene is meant to take place in Sasuke's mindscape of sorts. Where previous flashbacks were mostly from canon, this chapter has a lot more past-future stuff mixed up with past-present. It's up to you to figure out what everything means. :P

I suppose this chapter may seem like a drastic swing from the previous chapters, but Sasuke's memory flow fluctuates from time to time—Ibiki's questioning also starts to trigger more stuff, what with its focus on Itachi—and Naruto and Sakura happened to catch him at a very unstable moment (his already much emphasized obsession with Itachi from canon, plus the confusion of emotions fighting through his mental block, etc.). And of course, one must admit the boy has never claimed to be a paragon of sanity. :P

"… You and me, along with Naruto and Kakashi-sensei… we did all sorts of missions, just the four of us."  
-**Ch. 181** ("The Fight Begins")  
Something abruptly surfaced in his consciousness. What do you see with your Sharingan?—  
_I see you. Dead._  
-**Ch. 380** ("That Face")  
_I have absolutely no interest in you right now_, instead of maybe, perhaps—"You've become strong," Itachi says to him with a bloodied mouth—  
-**Ch. 147** ("My Fight") and **Ch. 384** ("Two Roads Diverge")  
—into a demon's eyes, "—even more sinister than my own—not at all unlike what I once saw in a certain—"  
-**Ch. 309** ("A Talk With the Nine-Tails")


	5. 4: fighting something unfamiliar

**4 – fighting something unfamiliar**

_Step step step_ as he went up the stairs—and Sasuke heard Naruto's resolute _step step step_ behind him. His feet moved automatically; he kept walking, going to the hospital roof.

The hospital roof was a good place. It was a familiar place.

_Have I been there before_? The question occurred to him briefly, but he batted it away. It didn't matter—it _shouldn't_matter at all.

The roof was cool against his bare feet—Sasuke glanced down. He hadn't even realized he wasn't wearing his shoes. But no, that was a given if he'd just left his bed.

He stood still and let the world move around him—watched Naruto intently, who was some distance away from him and—and _laughing_. "What's so funny?" he asked sharply, and the words flowed out as if he'd always had them in his mind. _What's so funny_?—and suddenly he had the strangest desire to laugh as well, as if there was nothing else he could do but laugh at himself for his—stupidity? No. For something, but he couldn't name it, something that mocked him relentlessly.

"Funny?" Naruto said. He slouched a little and grinned, a fierce look of anticipation in his face. "No, I'm just excited because I finally get to fight you. And hey!—put on your hitai-ate, Sasuke-_chan_."

_Sasuke-chan? Don't you_ dare_ call me that_.

"I don't need it," Sasuke said brusquely. He didn't need it; he didn't want it on his forehead. "You can't even put a scratch on me!" There was more to say, there had been more to say, but—

(_Water dripping upon his face, and something twisting in his chest, and he lets the hitai-ate fall to the ground._

_He's never needed it, he tells himself grimly. He's never needed them at all_.)

"That's not what I mean!" shouted Naruto, his eyes bright with indignation—he grasped his hitai-ate and jerked it up higher on his forehead, as if by doing so he could somehow force it into Sasuke's face. "I'm saying this is a symbol—that we fight as equal Konoha nin!"

"Equal?" Sasuke snapped. "_Equal_? You think you're on par with _me_?"

"Yeah, I do!" Naruto yelled back. "In fact, I've—"

—_never thought of myself as inferior to you_—he saw Naruto's mouth forming the words that were already echoing a half-second before in his head—_I heard this before_, the realization hitting Sasuke like a punch in the stomach, _I heard him saying these words when I woke up, but how could I have heard them_ then—

"—not even _once_!"

He didn't stop to reply, didn't stop to think about how he'd heard those words so many days before and_ why_—

—only lunged forward, and Sasuke's vision blurred with the blue of the sky and Naruto's eyes.

**oOo**

"—I've never thought of myself as inferior to you, not even once!" Naruto shouted, looking across at Sasuke.

And for a moment he stared, because Sasuke had visibly flinched at the words, a slight shudder running through his body.

_Does he really think that I'll always be worse than him_? His excitement suddenly deflated—_he wanted me to fight him, but—does he_ really _think that_?—

Then—the _hell_!

Sasuke was practically upon him—Naruto let out a hiss through his teeth and quickly dodged out of the way. He turned and rushed back at Sasuke—

_Slam_! Sasuke caught Naruto's fist in his hand even as Naruto caught Sasuke's. Naruto gritted his teeth, trying to drive Sasuke back with all his strength.

_You—have never acknowledged me?—never_?

"Che," breathed Sasuke with contempt lacing his voice, and Naruto looked up to meet the other boy's eyes. They were glazed over as if Sasuke weren't there—as if he weren't there fighting Naruto at all.

"You—_bastard_!" Naruto snarled at him, and—_damn it_! Sasuke brought his left leg up in a ready kick, aiming at Naruto's right side, and he had to push away from Sasuke. They leaped apart, both skidding to a halt.

Naruto tried to catch his breath as he brought his hands up into a series of familiar seals. He wasn't going to hold back—

And neither was Sasuke, whose punch missed Naruto by an inch as he was forced to duck. Naruto didn't even have time to make the seals as he brought his arms up to block Sasuke's kick.

And—when had Sasuke gotten this _fast_? So maybe they hadn't sparred in a while, but wouldn't he be _slower_ after his hospital stay?

But now—Sasuke was moving fluidly, too fluidly, and Naruto had to focus to keep up, sliding just out of range of Sasuke's kick, twisting away at the last second from his fist.

"Don't be so cocky," he gasped. "Just because everyone calls you a genius—"

"Then don't be so dumb," Sasuke's reply returned, cold like ice.

"Just shut up!" Naruto snapped.

He feinted a punch, then tried to get away—just that little bit of time for the seals, where was the _time_?—but Sasuke followed him too closely. _He's not letting me away—the teme!_

_Wait_—

An opening suddenly appeared, so blatant and astonishingly _there_ that Naruto almost missed it in his surprise. Because Sasuke had reached behind him, as if expecting the presence of some trusty weapon—_what the hell is he_doing?—and Naruto's notice of the shock on Sasuke's face was overcome by the sight of that opening, that_chance_—

Naruto's uppercut caught Sasuke under the chin, and—_Yes_! thought Naruto to himself in relief as Sasuke stumbled away. His hands moved through the seals as fast as they could.

"Taijuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" he shouted, and _finally_—he heard the familiar sound of kage bunshin popping into existence around him, and he had never been so glad for them then he was at that moment.

Sasuke steadied himself, breathing unevenly with his face half-hidden by disordered bangs. "_Usuratonkachi_," he gritted slowly, so very, very slowly—in a voice that didn't sound like Sasuke, not the Sasuke Naruto knew, not his stupid teammate Sasuke-teme.

"Don't call me that anymore, Sasuke!" _Be loud, be showy_—yes, his kage bunshin were slowly positioning themselves around Sasuke. "Besides"—goading _always_ worked—"your reflexes are _awful_!"

Sasuke snapped his head toward Naruto abruptly. The Sharingan flashed red and black in wide, strained eyes, and there was something almost like a blind madness in them.

He scoffed at himself—_don't be silly, no time to lose now_—"Let's go!" he snapped to the kage bunshin, and let them loose. There was always that vague sense of disconnection that spread through his mind, but he was used to it by now—

The kage bunshin descended upon Sasuke in a horde, battering at him wildly. Naruto crouched low, trying to make sense of what was happening from the foot movements—that, and a nebulous idea of the fight from his kage bunshin. Sasuke kicked one of them out of existence, ducked away from another—god, he moved so _quickly_—

But Sasuke was too preoccupied with the kage bunshin, and he didn't notice a few hanging back until—a gap in Sasuke's defense appeared fleetingly, and that was all Naruto needed.

_I—we—let's just get this_ done _right_! Several of his kage bunshin sprinted forward, running close to the ground—from the right, from the left, all at the same time, breaking through the others who had kept Sasuke from seeing the new attackers until, _yes, now_—

—the kicks struck Sasuke hard in the middle, and he was thrust up into the air, his hair wildly flying as he tensed—

Another one of Naruto's kage bunshin barreled toward Sasuke's back, but he managed to somehow flip up and out of the way—_damn_!—

—his teammate landed hard on the bunshin, dispelling it—Naruto clenched his teeth tightly in frustration, feeling the unsettling twinge in his own head right after that—

Sasuke made that motion again, reaching behind him for something, _something_ that wasn't there—Naruto saw that same peculiar look, the stiffening of his body. But something hardened along the planes of Sasuke's face into a cold harshness, and when he whipped his arm back around it was with the swiftness of familiarity, his hand coming down in a sharp, savage curve—

Sasuke, screaming incomprehensibly, and—

The world blinded Naruto in a flash of blazing light. He felt the shock race through his body—his kage bunshin, his_kage bunshin_, wiped out in a wash of white, and _oh_—everything seized up in that one instant, lightning in jagged streaks around him, through him—

—and then just _pain_.

**oOo**

—and he felt like his muscles were still spasming—_were they_?—he didn't know, couldn't really think. His back ached from when he'd been thrown against the wire fencing that lined the sides of the hospital roof.

His cheek was pressed against the cool ground, and the electric charge of lightning still hung heavily in the air. Naruto could hear footsteps coming closer through the lingering buzzing about his ears.

He turned his face up a little more, his sight still spotty from whatever Sasuke's jutsu had been—_and what the hell had that_ been?—saw a dark, dark smudge against a sky blue background.

Naruto's breathing hitched for a moment, tremors constricting his throat suddenly. He sucked in a great gulp of air—he willed himself to get up, he had to get up and show Sasuke he could still stand, even after all that.

His body betrayed him, though.

"Naruto." Sasuke speaking, dull and inflectionless and indifferent. "Oi. Naruto."

Naruto narrowed his eyes, trying to clear his vision; braced himself for what Sasuke was going to say. "_What_, teme?"

Bastard—he was never as strong as Sasuke, was he? All he'd wanted was to become stronger—and now Sasuke would just smirk at him, lean down and say something cutting, call him dead-last like always.

_Just wait—just_ wait. _I'm not the dead-last. I won't be that anymore_.

"You—" The level tone of Sasuke's voice broke abruptly. "Why did he have to come for _you_?"

"What?" Naruto muttered. He carefully tried tensing and relaxing his leg and arm muscles—_okay, good, they're all right, they're working_. He started to push himself up from the ground, his head spinning suddenly. "What are you talking about?"

"_Itachi_," Sasuke snapped. "My _brother_."

Naruto finally looked—really looked at Sasuke. His Sharingan was still activated, and his words didn't follow each other smoothly—as though he were biting them out without any idea of what would follow, no sense of order or time.

It made him uneasy. "How the hell should _I_ know?" he retorted.

"Don't say that," the other boy said darkly.

Naruto bristled; he knew he couldn't say anything about the Kyuubi, so he went for denial. "Well, I don't know, Sasuke! Don't ask me—"

—the next thing Naruto realized, Sasuke had pushed him up against the wire. "You _do_ know, goddamnit! Why did my brother come after you and not after _me_?"

Sasuke's grip was agonizingly tight—Naruto brought his hands up, trying to pry Sasuke off, but his muscles weren't cooperating, still suffering from Sasuke's jutsu, _what_ was _that jutsu_? "You—are you _mad_?" he choked. "You_want_ him after you?"

"Better me than _you_!" Sasuke screamed at him. He was glaring at Naruto, only Naruto had the odd sense that Sasuke wasn't seeing him at all. "You're too fucking _easy_ to kill, Naruto! And I still have to kill him first, you idiot! I have to—"

"_Sasuke-kun_!" Sakura had burst out onto the hospital roof. "_Stop_ it!"

Sasuke jerked back reflexively, his hold upon Naruto loosening momentarily—

—and Naruto slammed Sasuke into the ground. "Let go of me, Sasuke!" he hissed. "Let go of me, damn it!"

Something rippled in Sasuke's face, his eyes fading out of Sharingan red to the usual dark color, and the fabric of Naruto's jumpsuit slipped from Sasuke's hand limply. Naruto staggered to his feet as Sakura ran up to him, Kakashi following behind her.

"I'm sorry I didn't get here earlier, Naruto! I ran to get Kakashi-sensei," she said, the words coming out in a worried jumble. "Naruto, are you all right?"

Naruto rubbed his hand over his face haltingly, wearily. "I think so," he said, but there was no certainty in his voice.

Sakura turned sharply and stared at Sasuke, who was slowly sitting up now, his movements dazed and jerky. "And—what's _wrong_ with Sasuke-kun? Naruto?" Her voice was pleading, asking for some sort of answer that could right the balance of their world.

Naruto wasn't sure that balance had ever existed in the first place after all. "I don't know, Sakura-chan," he said. His neck still hurt faintly from Sasuke's grip—but the memory of Sasuke screaming at him, slowly choking him, hurt more anyway. "And—Sakura-chan, I'm sorry," he added all of a sudden, desperation in his voice. _I don't know what's happening—I don't know anything, Sakura-chan, I'm_ sorry.

Sakura was blinking furiously, as though trying to hold back tears. "You two are so _silly_, running off to fight like that," she said at last; her voice shook just a little. "You left me behind again, _honestly_. I—both of you always do that."

Kakashi rested his hand on Naruto's shoulder. "Maa, Naruto, Sakura," he said, a hint of grimness in his voice. "Could you leave for now? I'd like to talk to Sasuke in private." A pause. "And Naruto, have someone in the hospital check you over too, while you're here."

Sakura opened her mouth as if to protest, then closed it, a resigned look upon her face. "Yes, Kakashi-sensei," she said quietly. "You'll talk to Sasuke-kun, then? And check his…" She pressed her hand against the base of her neck and looked anxiously at Kakashi.

Their teacher's one visible eye curved up in an attempt at reassurance. "Don't worry," he replied. "Everything will be all right." He patted Sakura's arm and looked at Naruto.

Kakashi's words rang hollow in Naruto's ears. "Okay," he said numbly.

He let Sakura lead him away—Sakura, who was talking to him about seeing a nurse, her voice too cheerful to be truly genuine, and whose words veered away from mention of Sasuke any time he nearly came up.

_Why did he have to come for_ you? Sasuke had asked bitterly, too much behind his words to make any sense of them. _Better me than you_!

Naruto kept himself moving forward—remembered, _You're too fucking_ easy _to kill_, he'd said—and he looked back over his shoulder at Sasuke, who was silent as the grave.

* * *

The beginning of the fight scene is loosely based on Ch. 175. Writing fights is not my strength, but I hope it was satisfactory. :) (Sasuke's lightning jutsu—Chidori Nagashi. He has some explaining to do soon. :P)

A few people have mentioned that the story's getting a bit too confusing to follow, so thank you for telling me when you thought so. Granted, I'd like to point out that an inherent part of the story is going to involve a lot of confusion on Sasuke's part—however, I don't want to make it so confusing that _nothing's_ understandable. I'll try to do my best in clarifying things throughout the story when I can without giving something away.


	6. 5: shadows on all their faces

**5 - shadows on all their faces**

_I don't know, Sasuke! Don't ask me_!

"… but he was _lying_," Sasuke muttered to himself.

"Who was lying?"

Sasuke jerked back, nearly losing his balance—Kakashi crouched in front of him, watching him with a darkly curious glint in his eye. He blinked and glanced around—"Where's Naruto?" he asked, an odd feeling of fear creeping into his mind. _What if he went off to do something stupid_? "Where'd he go?"

"I told him to leave for now," Kakashi said, too lightly for the lightness to ring true. There was a sharp quality to his words that didn't bode well, although the surface was nothing but casualness. "Maa, Sasuke—when I was coming up, the lights along the top floor of the hospital all started flickering. And Naruto showed signs of electrocution. What was the jutsu you used?"

Sasuke's head felt abnormally clear in that instant, like everything extraneous had been forced away for now. He'd been fighting with Naruto, he remembered, but it was already turning into an indistinct haze for him. The best he could remember was—Sakura had been peeling apples for him, and Naruto's kage bunshin piling on him—

—Naruto's kage bunshin piling on him, forming a chain, but he swings them around and lets them go flying like so many shattered pieces of his past—_don't come after me, I don't_ want _you to come with me_—

"My jutsu?" he said slowly; brought up his hand and flexed it once, twice; kept thinking _Rasengan Rasengan Rasengan_ over and over again, and tried to suppress an involuntary twitch that ran up his spine. "It was… something to do with Chidori," he mumbled. "I think."

"You _think_?" Kakashi repeated. "Sasuke, Chidori isn't a technique you _use_ on your teammate. You should know that by now." He straightened up a little, still staring down at Sasuke. "And you didn't use the Chidori I taught you, either—it affected the hospital's electricity as well. So what was it?"

Everything was very still, too still and too calm and too quiet in Sasuke's mind. "I don't know," he said. "I—learned it. Somewhere. It was… dark. Lots of snakes. I—" And then his thoughts hit a dead end, crashing to a halt, because—

His vision swam with red, and he turned his head to the side, hacking violently. There was blood rising up—no, but there _wasn't_—yet he almost thought he could taste the tangy sting of blood in his mouth—

—he's been fighting for some time, the give and take a precarious balancing act, because while the other has the Mangekyou, _he_ has the greater will—for the last to kill the first of them all, and then he can finally break the circle of destruction and let his clan rest at last—

"Snakes?" Sasuke felt Kakashi's hand on his shoulder, steadying him from the coughing.

"It doesn't matter," he said, still looking off to the side. He didn't want to look at Kakashi, because—_Kakashi has the Mangekyou too, that's what they say_—wait, _what_? The very thought was utterly preposterous.

"Everything matters, Sasuke," Kakashi replied tersely, but his voice softened. "I heard about what happened with Itachi's return, and if we're going to figure out why he came back—"

Sasuke snapped his head back abruptly, his neck protesting at the sudden movement. "Figure out why?" he said through the raw feeling in his throat—something slid with a _click_ in his mind—"You—you know why Itachi wanted Naruto. You do—that chakra, the red chakra he has—"

"That is none of your business."

He glared up at Kakashi—saw the sunlight glinting off the silver-gray hair. He thought, detachedly, that in any other person it would have been a sure sign of age, or stress, or misfortune, but the fleeting thought was buried under a welling burst of anger. "Itachi was there," he snapped. "That _makes_ it my business."

Kakashi sighed. "Sasuke… don't think about revenge anymore. It won't do anything good for you." His voice took on a reflective tone. "I have—known many people as a shinobi. Those who want revenge—it never helps them. It only leaves you empty afterwards—"

"What do _you_ know about it?" Sasuke said bitterly. "My revenge against Itachi—I was _born_ into it, the Uchiha were all born into it, I _have_ to kill him—that's how it has to work out, in the end—"

Because, because—

"Hey, calm down, Sasuke," Kakashi said. "There's no need to tear your shirt like that—"

He only tightened his fingers on the fabric, his nails digging at the straining threads. "You don't know_ anything_," he said savagely. "To see the people you love dead—"

—"to kill them and watch them die," Itachi says, "that is our fate"—_don't say that, just_ shut up shut up shut up, he thought to himself, and—_but he never said that to me at the inn or in Tsukuyomi, so _how—

"—and how would you like it if I killed the people you love?"—his voice rose, edged with bitter cruelty, and something within him asked ruthlessly, _are you saying this to Kakashi or saying it to _yourself?—

"Sasuke," Kakashi said, his voice still impossibly placid and calm. "Turn off your Sharingan, you just activated it."

Sasuke let out his breath and forced himself to deactivate the Sharingan—he hadn't even realized the change in his eyes. "You don't know anything," he said finally, dully. _It doesn't matter that I beat Naruto in the fight—besides, I don't even remember_ how—_but Itachi _still _went after Naruto instead and said I was weak—and if I'm_weak—

_—then how do I kill my brother_?

"And also—I think you would find it hard." Kakashi's words were quiet in the silence that had fallen between them. "To kill your teammates and yourself."

Sasuke looked up, perplexed and not quite following Kakashi's train of thought, and then—_oh_.

He bent his head low so he could avoid Kakashi's eyes, feeling an intense discomfort creeping over him. "Maybe," he said grudgingly. And then something spurred him on to add, "But—it's not that hard to kill them. To kill anyone."

Kakashi said nothing—whether or not it was in shock, Sasuke didn't want to know. He went on, words coming from his mouth, and why he was saying them he wasn't even sure. "They—everyone dies too easily," he said. "It's too easy for people to die—that's how things always are." (_Red red red with the orange and black, and pink spread out gently against the ground_.)

A bird started to twitter brightly nearby. Kakashi sighed, a very deep sigh that seemed to come rattling from somewhere deep inside him, of loss and heartbreak and death and always, always the lingering aftermath. "Perhaps," he said, and his hand rested lightly on Sasuke's hair. "But the happiness that comes from your precious people is something you will never know if you keep pushing them away in the first place. Maa, we aren't the lucky ones, that's true." Sasuke felt the pressure of Kakashi's hand leave his head. "But—we aren't the worst off, not now. And I didn't teach you jutsu so you could use it against your friends like that, Sasuke… here, stand up."

He pulled Sasuke to his feet. "But you didn't use Chidori after all," he said nonchalantly. "Do you remember what it was?"

Sasuke stared at him; felt something lodge in his throat. "I don't know," he said. "Just—" _I know I had a sword_, he thought, _I thought I had my chokuto with me. But I don't even use one_…

He wondered if he were just dreaming this all, or if any of this was ever real. The gaping holes in his memories—words he heard before they were spoken—a weapon that_ shouldn't_ be there, _should_ be there—wasn't there.

"I see," said Kakashi. He slanted a look at Sasuke, his single eye scrutinizing his face carefully. "So. You really don't know. And you're not lying, either—really, you're a bad liar."

—"That's what you say—but you're a bad liar," Itachi breathes out, and a smile falls across his face—

Sasuke drew in his breath sharply and stiffened._ That—didn't happen. No. It couldn't have happened_.

He turned his face away from Kakashi and stared out over Konoha, trying to ignore Kakashi, ignore himself. The sun was casting fading rays over the trees, silhouettes cut sharply against the ground, and the sky was beginning to flow from the afternoon blue into the red and gray of dusk.

_Don't forget your purpose_, something said to him with dark amusement in his mind. _This village will only become the shackles that bind you—it's best to just cut those worthless connections. In doing so, you'll be able to obtain a much greater power_.

A more contemptuous voice now, sharp and pitiless and scornful: _What is your purpose in life?—What about Uchiha Itachi_?

He pressed his right hand up against his chest—felt his heart thumping _Itachi Itachi Itachi_ with every beat.

"Let's go back now, Sasuke," said Kakashi, nodding toward the door that opened onto the hospital roof. "I'll take you to your room."

_There's nothing to go back to_, Sasuke wanted to tell Kakashi, _there's never been anything for me to go back to_, but he stayed silent and followed Kakashi instead. The light was fading across the roof, across Konoha, across Sasuke, and nightfall slowly came upon them in a crawling tangle of shadows.

**oOo**

"—yes, I told the nurses to keep an eye on him while I'm on my mission. It's the best I could do."

Tsunade sighed. "Very true. That's all that can be done for now—all the shinobi are too busy with missions, as you well know, Kakashi. I can't pull some off their assignments and order them to guard a boy in the hospital, especially since there is no real concrete evidence for doing so."

"Mmm." Jiraiya shifted his weight, and his long spiky hair rustled against his back. "Tsunade, have you asked a doctor to look at him? A psychiatrist?"

Kakashi frowned and raised his head, looking at Jiraiya. "That's very risky. There's no way of knowing what it would do to the stability of his mind."

"But right now we definitely know that there's something wrong with him," Tsunade broke in. She sat back in her chair, watching Kakashi sternly. He gazed back, half-wishing for _Icha Icha_ to be in front of his face, for the presence of his familiar orange-colored shield. His hands itched uncomfortably under Tsunade's gaze. "Tell me what happened again."

"Well—he and Naruto started fighting, and somehow he electrocuted Naruto. That's the best I could determine. It's not something he would know—and I certainly didn't teach him anything like that. The closest thing would be Chidori, but the effects of the jutsu _weren't_ from Chidori."

"Lightning jutsu learned from an unknown," Jiraiya said musingly. "His brother's jutsu?"

"Maybe—but he mentioned snakes."

A trailing silence. Then: "Go on."

"Afterwards, he didn't remember much of what had happened at all. I didn't pressure him about it at the time—I thought it better not to trigger any planted impulses Uchiha Itachi might have potentially put into his mind. You mentioned that possibility before when you spoke to me a few days ago, Tsunade-sama."

"Snakes," repeated Jiraiya thoughtfully, his eyebrows furrowed. "That smacks of Orochimaru."

"But Sasuke's had absolutely no contact with Orochimaru since the chuunin exams, as far as I know," Kakashi pointed out. _As far as I know_, the words echoed, and he wondered how much he did know.

Tsunade and Jiraiya exchanged looks, but Kakashi could guess at the meaning—Jiraiya, tilting his head to the side,_Orochimaru has always been determined_; Tsunade's eyebrows barely rising, _Yes, I know_. Then Tsunade leaned forward and picked up some papers on her desk. "I have Morino Ibiki's report here as well," she said. "But I don't think you had a chance to look over it, have you, Kakashi?"

"I don't think so," he replied, and took the papers Tsunade held out to him.

… _an abrupt reversal in the way he directed his responses. Originally he had been very emotionally agitated about relating the story. He had the tendency to grip the bedsheets very tightly, and when he spoke, his words seemed to imply a sense of disorientation._

_However, Uchiha's demeanor completely changed once he began to actually answer the questions. One particular aspect that must be noted was that he never made eye contact during this time. His voice was remarkably emotionless, especially considering his former reaction_…

Kakashi felt like slamming his head against the wall—or _something_. Ibiki's observations matched Kakashi's remarkably well; Sasuke had been like that on the roof, suddenly angry and then eerily calm, too unpredictable in his mood swings. _My team is going to be the_ death_ of me_, he thought tiredly.

First Orochimaru, now Itachi—everything seemed to be converging all at once upon them. At first, they'd thought maybe Tsukuyomi had done something—the jutsu's capabilities weren't fully known, and Kakashi couldn't exactly apply his own experience to Sasuke's.

And now the mention of snakes, which absolutely _reeked_ of Orochimaru.

_Damn it, it makes no _sense!

Tsunade was speaking, and he lifted his head, returning his attention to the Hokage—thought in surprise, _did she actually say that_? "Er, could you repeat that?"

Tsunade glanced at him. "I said—I think I'd like Naruto and Sakura to keep their distance," she said simply. "If Uchiha Sasuke continues to act the way he is—the potential for a volatile situation with all three of them is too great. Frankly, it's already happened, what with that fight of theirs."

_Isolation will make it worse_, he wanted to tell her—wanted to say, _This is not the way the team should be_. But he only said, "Just to let you know—you do realize that Naruto and Sakura won't allow that to happen."

"Hmph. I'll tell them myself tomorrow, I can suffer their wrath. In any case, we need to hear Naruto's side of the story, although not now—let them all cool down a bit and think seriously for once." For a moment, a flash of weariness flitted across her face. "I'll also be calling in Yamanaka Inoichi tomorrow morning to take a look at Uchiha Sasuke. We'll have to do something sooner or later—don't look like that, Kakashi. I dislike doing this as much as you do—the boy isn't guilty of anything, but taking everything into consideration—"

"I understand, Tsunade-sama," Kakashi said. _I_ know _that. If only I knew what was happening with Sasuke_… But the answer to that still remained maddeningly elusive, and he felt like he was losing control of his students—if he had ever had control of them at all.

**oOo**

"He's in the hospital, so—"

"State the obvious, why don't you, fatass?"

A pause, as Jiroubou pointedly ignored the insult. "…we're to slip in and out of this place with the boy before anyone notices. Your flute, Tayuya?"

"Don't bother wasting your fucking breath," Tayuya returned heatedly.

"No need to ask, Jiroubou," Sakon said. "We can afford to wait until it grows darker, though."

"… you think I can't pull off my own genjutsu?"

Kidoumaru looked up from where he'd been working with his threads. "It doesn't matter," he said. "We have all the time in the world—either way, he'll come with us."

He smiled, and his hands twisted the threads into an arrow; the silken strands were lit faintly by the light of the setting sun, which bled streaks of red across the darkening sky. "Orochimaru-sama will be pleased."

* * *

Chapter title from:

_Wind wherein seas and stars are shaken  
Shall shake them, and they shall not waken;  
None that has lain down shall arise;  
The stones are sealed across their places;  
One shadow is shed on all their faces,  
One blindness cast on all their eyes_.  
—Algernon Swinburne, "Ilicet"

Okay, things are beginning to really move now...

I hope Kakashi's IC. And the Sound Four. And Sasuke as well. His perspective veers between very emotional and very numb (as Kakashi observed in the text), but that comes from present!Sasuke and future!Sasuke slipping back and forth in his mind.

_Don't forget your purpose_, something said to him with dark amusement in his mind. _This village will only become the shackles that bind you—it's best to just cut those worthless connections. In doing so, you'll be able to obtain a much greater power_.  
A more contemptuous voice now, sharp and pitiless and scornful: _What is your purpose in life?—What about Uchiha Itachi_?  
—**Ch. 179** ("Don't Forget")


	7. 6: called the sound four

**6 – called the sound four**

"So what is it you wanted to tell me, Sakura-chan?" Naruto looked up from his ramen. He still looked pensive, a little more quiet than he usually was. It unnerved Sakura slightly—but then again, everything seemed to unnerve her nowadays. Naruto hadn't even cheered or seemed smug when she told him she'd go on a date with him to Ichiraku's—there'd only been a nonplussed expression on his face, and "Really, Sakura-chan? Why?"

"There's something you need to know," she'd answered.

Things weren't being _normal_.

_You gave up being normal when you became a ninja, hell, deal with it_!

"Er—" Sakura fixed her gaze on the posters lining the back of Ichiraku's. "You told me that you met Orochimaru when you went to find Tsunade-sama."

Naruto's chopsticks clattered. "Yeah! What's this?" He turned in his seat toward her, looking at her, and the intensity of his gaze communicated more than any words he could say.

_Sasuke-kun said not to, but—some things are more important than what he wants_.

"… Sasuke-kun didn't want me to tell you this," she muttered, picking at the fabric of her dress. "He didn't want you to worry, but during the chuunin exams—when Orochimaru was there, he bit Sasuke-kun here—" she raised her left hand and pressed it to the base of her neck, angling it so Naruto could see more clearly "—and gave him a curse seal. It's—it's how he fought off the Oto nin in the Forest of Death." She shivered slightly.

Naruto picked up one of the chopsticks again and stuck it in his bowl of ramen. "So… that's the bruise you were talking about back then, weren't you?" he said musingly. His head was lowered over his bowl so that Sakura couldn't quite see his face.

_He remembers that_? Sakura nodded. "Yes," she said. "And—oh, I shouldn't have listened to Sasuke-kun, Naruto!" Shouldn't have kept the seal a secret from Naruto, shouldn't have let Orochimaru get to Sasuke in the first place; shouldn't have glossed over her training, because now when she needed to be strong she had less to work with than her teammates—and the disappointment twisted in her stomach with all the cold cruelty of a serrated knife. "After Orochimaru gave him the curse seal, he said… he said that Sasuke-kun would go to him for power."

"Power?" Naruto repeated, looking up. "Why would he bother?" He added, more grudgingly, "Sasuke's strong enough anyway, I still have to beat him first."

"You don't have to do that, Naruto."

"What do you mean?" He frowned, and his face closed up in a flash of simmering indignation. "You think I can't win?"

"No!" Sakura said sharply. "It's just," she paused, unsure of how to continue, because she couldn't identify what she thought herself—only that wonder of_ why do you keep on like this? You're _fine. "Just. You two don't need to fight all the time, you know? All the time—oh, you are both so ridiculous!"

Naruto slurped up the last of his ramen. "He was the one who wanted to fight me, Sakura-chan," he said crossly. "Although—"

"You shouldn't have agreed!" Sakura snapped. "I don't know what's wrong with Sasuke-kun, but you shouldn't have fought!" She realized she'd raised her voice more than intended, and flushed. "Sorry, Naruto," she said and glanced over guiltily. "I'm just stressed."

But Naruto didn't look like he'd paid attention to what she'd said. He was staring down at his empty ramen bowl, a silent surprise slowly dawning across his face. "… he was jealous of me," Naruto said almost wonderingly.

"Huh?" Sakura frowned. "What are you talking about?"

He stood up, still looking at the bowl as if it held all the secrets of his life, everything that he had ever wanted to know. "Yeah," he said; said again, as though trying to confirm his sudden realization, "Yeah, he really was."

"Naruto…" Sakura said, getting up from her seat and grabbing Naruto's arm, swinging him around so he would look at her. "Who's he? Sasuke-kun? What are—"

"Let's go back to the hospital. I want to talk to Sasuke again."

_What_? Sakura frowned. "Kakashi-sensei said to leave him alone for now," she reminded Naruto. "Now probably isn't the best time—besides, it's really late, you ought to go home and sleep—"

"It's just for a moment!" Naruto looked distracted. "I want to talk to him about something, Kakashi-sensei won't know."

Sakura loosened her grip on Naruto's sleeve. "Well—I suppose there's no harm done…" _To see Sasuke-kun… that's all right, isn't it? We should be able to visit him, even after that fight—I mean, I'm sure they know Naruto and Sasuke aren't going to actually start scrabbling about and kill each other. They wouldn't do that_. "Okay then. Don't be loud, though; otherwise the nurses might yell at us."

"Sure, Sakura-chan. There's just something the bastard said that he's going to be explaining to me, that's all." He started to walk away, then glanced back. "Are you coming?"

Sakura bit her lip. _I ought to be home by now—but, well, it should be fine. My parents know that being a ninja means staying out really late if necessary. And it's _my_ team_. "Of course I am," she replied loudly, running to catch up with him. "Why are you even _asking_? You're so stupid sometimes!"

Naruto's face took on a comically wounded expression. "But Sakura-chan—"

"Don't start whining, you look even worse when you do that—"

"Hey, I'm not that ugly!"

Sakura huffed. "Honestly, I didn't say you were _ugly_—"

"Oh, so I'm_ handsome_!" Naruto put his arms up behind his back and grinned widely. "You think I'm handsome, Sakura-chan? You really think so?"

"_Idiot_!—don't jump to conclusions like that!" Sakura stalked past him, but the corners of her mouth twitched up. "Walk faster, Naruto, you're the one being slow now."

Naruto laughed.

**oOo**

Sasuke squinted his eyes and turned his head slightly to the right; even through the darkness he could almost make out the spidery-thin crack that darted its way across the hospital room's ceiling and down the wall, splitting into a network of tiny fissures at the top of the window.

His pillow felt rougher than usual—or perhaps he was just being overly sensitive to everything. Ever since Kakashi had brought him back to the room and left him there, he'd felt a sense of uneasiness—or anticipation, but what he was anticipating, he didn't know. He only sensed that everything seemed sharper and more real to him, as if some unknown part of his mind wanted to memorize every shuffle the leaves made, every passing shade of night across the room, every fleeting whiff of the sanitizer-scented air.

… _Something's different_. The thought settled and lodged in his brain.

_Different from what_?

He had been lying in bed for the better part of the night, thinking and envisioning lots of—absurdities, really, because what else could he call them? Sometimes he remembered Naruto's face, although he remembered it looking older and much more angry, an older Naruto who was busy yelling at him, and he remembered smirking down, always smirking, and corridors darkly cold and blank.

And when he'd been fighting—_No. Don't think about that_. But the voices sounded so similar—that had been Itachi's voice, he knew his brother's voice as well as he knew his own—and he had sworn, for a moment, that he could taste the spray of water in his mouth, even though they'd been on the hospital roof—_been at that valley_—valley? Nothing else was definite; he recalled vaguely that someone else had been speaking to him about Itachi, but…

Sasuke had never prized imagination, because imagination was for fools, he thought—he didn't need to imagine his dreams, he simply made them happen. Only—so maybe he did have an overactive imagination after all. _I'm better than this_, he thought. _I should know better than to be bothering myself with these kinds of things. They wouldn't even happen, not in my lifetime_.

His gaze traveled back to the crack, following it again across the ceiling—down the wall, past the top of the window before it stopped halfway down—_why am I here? I'm not doing anything here_, Sasuke told himself. _I'm not learning what I need to learn_—

Even without his Sharingan activated, Sasuke was good—good enough—at remembering how things were supposed to be.

_Something's different_.

—that crack.

He let his breath slowly hiss out between his teeth—gauged the speed of his heartbeat. It hadn't changed much, had it? At least, not enough to alert whoever it was that was fiddling around.

The crack had changed. It had been a spider's web, like tiny tree branches that grew into nothing, but now—he looked at the single line winding innocently down the wall.

His nebulous thoughts hardened to suspicion, and he sat up in bed, turning his head casually to the right. He brought his hands together under his chin and strained to hear something, anything.

—like that, the noise near the door. There was more rustling then there should be, now that he was really paying attention, a barely audible shuffling and strains of a melody (a _melody_, of all things) but just there—

"Kai!" he snapped, sliding out of bed and turning around, facing what seemed to be an empty room. "Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?" His stomach clenched tightly.

—_I'm sitting in a water tank, what do you think I'm doing? But I know you—your team was the one that killed Zabuza, wasn't it_?

Sasuke stiffened. _What the_—

"Well, damn," said a disarmingly casual voice that floated out of the shadows. "Nice genjutsu, Tayuya, he noticed it after all."

"Shut your mouth before I rip it off your ugly face." A kunoichi with bright red hair moved away from the hospital door and glared at him, tossing a flute back and forth in her hands. "You're Uchiha Sasuke, huh." Under her breath—although he heard her anyway—she muttered, "Looks like a regular brat."

He bristled, but didn't reply; instead, he stepped back and fell into a guarded position. _After this_, Sasuke thought wildly, _I am going to demand my weapons back. Kunai, shuriken, the choku—the security here is so damn _shoddy. "What's it to you?" he snapped. _One here, but there's more—called the Sound Four, that's what they said—_and then his thoughts came to a stuttering halt, because—

Three others slid into sight then, like faded wraiths of ink on burnt paper as they moved out from the shadows. He blinked and tried to clear away the patterns of black that momentarily danced across their faces. Why did his vision have to choose this time of all times to screw around with him? "You're the Sound Four," he said, and didn't pause to think about how he'd know that, because—he skipped past the protest of common sense in his mind. "Why did Orochimaru send you here?"

_That's not a question_.

"You know us?" drawled one of the newcomers; he pushed back pale hair and smirked. "I'm flattered."

"I don't know _you_," Sasuke said tersely. "I'll say this again—who the hell are you all?"

"South Gate, Jiroubou," said one of the four who hadn't spoken yet. Sasuke glanced sharply at him; he stood with his arms crossed over his chest, and his eyes were narrowed in wary deliberation.

"West Gate, Sakon," said the pale-haired ninja.

"North Gate, Tayuya," the red-haired kunoichi said, still scowling.

Sasuke looked at the last one, who smiled placidly and said, "East Gate, Kidoumaru. Of the Sound Four, but you already knew that, didn't you?"

"There's no reason why I shouldn't," he said coldly—to them or to himself, that was another matter. "What are you here for?"

"Exactly as you said," Kidoumaru replied. "Orochimaru-sama sent us."

Sasuke glared. "That wasn't an answer," he said. "_Why_?"

"You're a bitchy one, aren't you?" said Tayuya. She looked rather disgusted. "Just like Kimimaro. Stuck-up fucker."

He didn't deign to respond to her and kept silent; sooner or later they'd have to give up _some_ information.

Something like irritation crept over Sakon's face—_he has no patience_, Sasuke noted. "An offer," he said. "Come with us to Orochimaru-sama—he will give you strength." _Strength_, and he said like it was a reward.

"What does that matter?" Sasuke said, putting a scornful twist in his words. "I don't need to get strength from_him_."

Jiroubou shifted and said, "Orochimaru-sama is one of the Sannin. You should be glad that he's willing to stoop to someone as weak as you and give you this offer." He spoke blandly, but his words—_weak_?

"_One_ of the Sannin." Sasuke didn't move from his position. "There's two more in Konoha—I don't see how this makes Orochimaru particularly special. I can go to the others—" he stopped short and pressed his lips together tightly. He remember who already had one of the Sannin for a teacher.

_Naruto_.

"What's wrong? Something else?" Kidoumaru said. "Oh yes. Jiraiya's already taken on your teammate, hasn't he? It's rather surprising you got passed over—" the words struck at Sasuke's resentment, _hard_ "—especially since you're the last Uchiha. Really, _quite_ surprising. And Tsunade is the Hokage—hardly time for a genin like you. Pity."

Sasuke felt his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands. "That has nothing to do with you," he said stiffly._Naruto's an apprentice to one of the Sannin—he beat Neji, and Gaara too—he nearly beat me on the rooftop, if it weren't for what I did_—whatever he'd done, he didn't even know, so _that_ wasn't helping—_and. Itachi's target_.

_Why did he ignore me like I was nothing? My damn brother_.

"It has nothing to do with us?" Sakon echoed. "We're the ones making the offer."

"There's no reason for me to leave Konoha," Sasuke said aloud, watching the Sound Four. "I don't need Orochimaru to become strong."

Sakon started forward, a look of irritation on his face, but Jiroubou stopped him and gave Sakon a pointed look. Kidoumaru looked smug.

Tayuya let out a derisive bark of laughter. "Hah! You're as ignorant as the rest of the Konoha nin, spouting that shit about your Will of Fire, aren't you? All that stuff about worthless connections! You've never really thought about what you need to do—what is your _purpose_ in life? Are you going to stay here and cry on everyone's shoulders? What about Uchiha Itachi?" Her words dripped with contempt.

Sasuke jerked back as if he'd been lit on fire.

_What is your purpose in life?—What about Uchiha Itachi_?

He—had heard that before. _Yes, I've heard that_, Sasuke thought furiously, angry and bewildered all at once, because how could he hear what hadn't been said? Until now, and Tayuya had said it exactly the same way, that curious mixture of callousness and disdain.

Kakashi was there, and he had been standing on the hospital rooftop.

_My purpose in life—_

—_is to kill Uchiha Itachi_, he says with all the stark single-mindedness of a twelve-year-old as he sits with his teammates—_I'm going to kill Uchiha Itachi_, he says again to the shattered remnants of a water tank—_now that he's gone_, Karin asks as she hands him a bandage, _what now_? He looks up, and the color of her hair seems too intense because even after all this time he can almost imagine pink hair instead—_just one more_, he says; he doesn't hide his weariness, and hopes that this is the last. _I'm after Akatsuki—I need to kill Uchiha Madara_—

_You're late. What are you teaching me today, Orochimaru_?

_Don't fuss, Sasuke-kun_. He turns toward Sasuke and laughs that eerily rippling laugh which always irks Sasuke even more. _You have all the time in the world_.

_Time has _nothing_ to do with it. I want to kill_—

"Are you going to make up your mind?" Sakon broke in. He looked annoyed. "Are you coming with us or not? If not—"

Sasuke didn't miss the look he threw to Kidoumaru. _What was that for_?

"Make your decision." That was Jiroubou. He continued, "You haven't had any good come from staying here in Konoha and doing nothing—Orochimaru-sama can make you powerful."

Sasuke suddenly tasted blood in his mouth, and realized he'd bit down on his tongue. _Damn it. I didn't get Itachi by staying in Konoha… didn't? No—I won't be able to. There's no "didn't" if I haven't _done_ it yet_.

And also, there was the nagging feeling that _of course_ he would go with them, as if he hadn't been willing to do it before.

"Well?" Kidoumaru demanded—

"Fine," Sasuke snapped, falling out of his fighting position. "I'm coming with you to Orochimaru." He tried not to think—_Naruto Sakura Kakashi_—because it'd always been Itachi from the beginning, and if Naruto was catching up then he had to get stronger. And—_don't bother with this_, he decided. _It's already settled and done_. "I take the offer."

Kidoumaru looked strangely disappointed.

Jiroubou smiled. "Good," he said. "Otherwise, it would've been a pity—"

Sakon and Kidoumaru suddenly vanished from Sasuke's vision, and he drew back, startled—

"—if we'd had to actually force you," Jiroubou finished, and even as he spoke, Sasuke felt the cold point of a kunai barely against the back of his neck. And—a gleaming row of silk spun in front of him, that would have blocked him if he'd moved forward to fight.

"What the _hell_?" Sasuke said.

"I was _hoping_ I could have some fun with you," Kidoumaru's voice came from behind Sasuke. "If you'd refused—well, we can deal with you quite easily."

Then Sakon spoke—_he's behind me too? How did they both get there? And—how did I not_ notice? "I could've put my kunai right through you, if I'd bothered," he said.

Sasuke let out his breath in a rush of anger and looked back at Jiroubou and Tayuya. Jiroubou returned his gaze mildly, and Tayuya—

Tayuya blew across her flute one more time and moved it away from her mouth. "You're such a stupid bastard, Uchiha," she said, and Sasuke heard the hint of darkly amused laughter in her voice. "You never even noticed that there was another genjutsu on the room—Sakon and Kidoumaru have been behind you the entire time. Some genius mind you've got, dumbass. _My_ kind of skill is what you get when you're under Orochimaru-sama." She smirked and looked over Sasuke's head. "You fuckers, I _told_ you my genjutsu would work."

"Let him go now," Jiroubou said, his expression still unflappable. The threads of spider silk fell away in front of Sasuke, and he felt the kunai's pressure vanish from the back of his neck.

"Don't fool around, Sakon, Kidoumaru." Jiroubou looked back at Sasuke. "I assume you'll get your belongings. Meet us outside Konoha once you're ready."

"Yes," he said. _I never noticed. I didn't notice. I wasn't good enough to figure that out_—resentment and anger at the Sound Four—at himself—bubbled up and battered his mind. _To become stronger_—"I'll be there."

* * *

Some people commented how they hoped Sasuke would win the fight against the Sound Four this time or something of the like, so I'm sorry if you're disappointed. However, I'd never intended to have a full-out fight in the first place. Imho, in canon the Sound Four deliberately goaded Sasuke into fighting because they'd seen how resentful Sasuke was from the Kakashi-Sasuke confrontation (I assume they didn't see the hospital rooftop fight), and were willing to take the risk of a fight and potential for drawing attention to drive home their point of how "weak" Sasuke was. However, in the AU situation, they don't have any idea about Sasuke's mindset; they only know that he's in the hospital because of Itachi, and haven't had the chance to observe him and how he reacts. So in this case, they decided to start off approaching Sasuke in a much more non-confrontational style.

If it's not clear—Sasuke noticed the first layer of genjutsu because Tayuya had made the difference obvious to make him assume that he'd already seen through their attempts at concealment. Then she overlapped the first layer with another so that at the end, they could still hint to Sasuke that they were powerful (as in, Sasuke hadn't been good enough to notice the second one, and the passing mention of Orochimaru serves to emphasize their argument for going to him and becoming more powerful). However, please keep in mind that Sasuke is also a lot more skeptical than the first time around. ;)

_What is your purpose in life?—What about Uchiha Itachi_?  
—**Ch. 179** ("Don't Forget")


	8. 7: such deliberate illusions

**7 – such deliberate illusions**

The Uchiha compound seemed even more stifling than usual. Sasuke pushed open the door to the armory; heard the _squeak_ of long neglected hinges. He had never tried to find any reason to come to the weapons room, not when he could get perfectly fine kunai and shuriken in the market, and a visit was not worth the memories of an uncle who'd nearly hit Sasuke once with his bo staff, or a cousin three times removed who had played with her naginata like it was nothing more than an extension of herself—spinning it until the blade at the end of the pole was just a shimmering flash of curved silver against the sun, and when Sasuke had peered up he could see only the bright, terrible beauty of a weapon that aimed to cut, and cut deeply.

_Like the Uchiha clan in general_, thought Sasuke—a clan whose members had swept toward their ambitions with an inexorable drive. _I—will do whatever it takes_.

… why had he come here again?

Sasuke frowned. He'd wanted a blade, maybe a wakizashi—no, something longer. There—

He looked at the wall on his right, where a few swords were neatly hung. He didn't recall anyone using them, but on second thought, they wouldn't have done so. The weapons actively used by clan members had been buried with them; these were the ones unwanted and neglected, even before the massacre.

Sasuke carefully drew a katana out from its covering and turned it, letting the pale moonlight shine upon it. It had good weight, good balance—only, Sasuke decided, the blade was curved, and—

—in any case, his is a chokuto, one with a straight blade so he can direct his chakra more effectively, and—

—_I have no weapon like that_, he thought abruptly. _Why do I _need_ this in the first place_?

_There's a good one over there_, he noticed (_ignore that question, just get a good weapon_, some part of his mind urged him, _do that_). He slid the katana back where it had been, and picked up the chokuto, hefting it in his hand.

"This'll do," he said aloud to himself; the words fell awkwardly in the quiet of the room, and Sasuke suddenly wanted to leave. _I don't want to be here_—

"You should be careful when you use that, Sasuke-kun. You can hurt others, but you can just as easily hurt yourself." He leans over, invading Sasuke's space abruptly, and Sasuke draws back, glowering, and—yes, there is a sense of decay in Orochimaru, in the way his skin sags ever so slightly, the color of pale discolored wax, and his breath comes skittering over Sasuke with the smell of a dug-up skeleton.

He scowls and grips the scabbard tightly. _Move away_.

"I don't need your advice," he muttered, then stopped short in the corridor. Who had said…?

_Do not think about that_. But if he tried to analyze it—the voice was terribly familiar, and he wanted to know, to remember—

(_Don't remember. You don't want to remember_, said a little voice, heavy and cold as the darkness that bore down upon him.)

He'd—left the armory (_when?—doesn't matter, the when and how and why has never mattered_), and—ah, there was his room. Familiar territory—Sasuke moved toward the door a little faster than he usually did and almost stumbled for a moment. "Damn it," he snapped at the ground. He needed to leave quickly anyway; it didn't seem like the Sound Four had _that_ much patience.

The chokuto was unceremoniously stuffed into his pack. _That's it_, Sasuke thought. _There's nothing more to bring_.

He glanced up, then, and saw the photograph on the windowsill, the outlines of four people barely visible in the dark—couldn't breathe in that second, as if the air had been sucked out of his lungs. _Too young_, he wondered, _we look so stupidly young_—

Young?—_that wasn't taken very long ago, what the hell are you saying_?

Sasuke took a deep breath. _I. Am going to Orochimaru. That is all. None of you know, none of you will ever understand or know or_—and he couldn't determine if he was directing the words at them or at himself. "Sorry," he said bluntly. "I still have my ambition."

He slung the pack on and shoved his hands into his pockets, looking at the photograph of his team for a moment longer before he turned away, shadow sliding across his face like a blank mask.

_There's nothing more to bring_.

**oOo**

"The receptionist—she's sleeping," Sakura whispered to Naruto. "I'm surprised, she's usually awake and being her usual self, but…"

"Good for us, then," Naruto said, and strode past the receptionist's desk. _Sleeping or drunk or knocked out cold, at least we don't have to worry about her blocking us_. "Let's go, Sakura-chan!"

"Hey, don't go that fast!" Sakura said, grabbing ahold of his collar. "You don't want to run into any of the nurses and get thrown out or something for coming at this time, since it's not visiting hours."

"Eh?" Naruto looked at Sakura. "It'll be fine, don't worry." _It doesn't matter if a nurse stops me or not_, he thought,_I'm still going to see Sasuke either way_.

"If you say so." There was a note of concern to Sakura's voice. "It's lucky she was so fast asleep, she's usually awake and if she was, then she wouldn't let us see Sasuke-kun—" she faltered and fell silent, her forehead creased in thought as she walked next to him. "Naruto," she said. "So—what did Sasuke-kun say?"

"… what he said?"

"I saw him yelling something at you when I got to the rooftop. I was just wondering…"

_You—Why did he have to come for_ you?

"It was about his brother," he answered, not quite looking at Sakura's face; he concentrated instead on following the line that marked the junction of wall and floor, a line that trailed down the hallway and disappeared at the next corner.

It was like—like chasing after Sasuke, only to find that what he searched for hadn't been there in the first place. He sensed that there was something about Sasuke that he needed to figure out, just as if he were blindly running around in a maze, only he didn't know what the outcome would be, murkily hidden as it was beneath that strange look on the bastard's face—_too fucking easy to kill_—_to kill_—

_What the hell did you mean_?

"He was angry that his brother Itachi caught up with ero-sennin and me—"

"I remember you telling me that," Sakura said. "He was trying to attack Jiraiya-sama, right?"

"Ahaha, yeah," Naruto said, laughing nervously. Sakura had believed his hastily made-up story, that Itachi had been after ero-sennin instead of Naruto himself—and the knowledge of Sakura's trust made his stomach twist into a knot of queasy tension. "And—uh, yeah."

Sakura gave Naruto a long, hard look. "… and what else did he say?"

"That's it!" Naruto quickly said. "And then the rest was Sasuke just being a prick and stuck-up and—" he was aware that he was babbling, "I told him he should go jump in a lake and stay there forever—"

"Just—stop, Naruto," Sakura said. She was smiling, an amused, wistful little smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "You can tell me later if you like."

"I—" Naruto wanted to say, _I'm the Kyuubi jinchuuriki, that's why Itachi's after me, that's why Sasuke was yelling at me—and he was jealous of me for _some_ reason, I don't know why. And I can't tell him why, I can't tell you either_. But the way Sakura had simply let him off the hook swept him with a wave of relief, as though the air had lightened. The feeling of pressure bearing down upon him would build up and come again, the way it happened when he thought _jinchuuriki_ and felt hot and cold all over, frozen in his heart's own fire. But for now—

Naruto couldn't help the small grin that broke over his face. It was better to be happy than to be a killjoy. "Okay," he said; then he stopped short. "And—uh, wait, were we supposed to go left or right?"

"… you don't even remember how to get to Sasuke-kun's room?" Sakura stared at him. Naruto squirmed under her gaze, which was full of long-suffering exasperation. "Naruto!"

"I'm sure we had to go left there!" Naruto protested, pointing over his shoulder to the corner they'd just turned. "But this doesn't seem like it's the right place at all! I don't know, I'm sure I was supposed to take a left. You should've told me if I was going in the wrong direction."

"I thought you would _know_, so I wasn't bothering to pay attention," Sakura said, looking quite disgruntled, and sighed. "Really," she added as she turned around and glanced down the corridor, "if you're going to visit Sasuke-kun, at least know what _room_ he's in."

"It's not like I know how to get to his room blindfolded," Naruto mumbled, and nearly wilted under Sakura's glare.

Then Sakura dropped the look and sighed. "Here, follow me," she said, turning on her heel.

After a few wrong turns on Sakura's part—"I thought you said you visited him every day!" Naruto had loudly told her, and was treated with a slap to the back of his head—they stopped next to a door in the next corridor over. Sakura furrowed her eyebrows. "I… think this is it," she said. "But—do you really want to talk to him now? It's really late, and Sasuke-kun's probably asleep…"

The rather more mannerly part of Naruto's mind, which was usually for all intents and purposes nonexistent, was protesting loudly. _You don't really want to see him, do you? He won't listen to you anyway, and you'll never get anything worthwhile out of him_—

_Shut up_, Naruto told the irritating thought bluntly, and shoved the grasping doubt away. _I don't listen to anyone who says_ never. _No one's going to be saying that to_ me!

"Naruto?" He jerked his head sharply at Sakura. "Are you listening to me?" All of a sudden, she looked very tired, her eyes half-closed in unconscious imitation of Kakashi's own habit. "If Sasuke-kun is asleep—"

"So what if he's asleep? I'm giving up my sleep for him!" Naruto shouted, more at the door than at Sakura, and the echo of _for him—for him—him_ rang faintly about the corridor. He brought his hand up in a sharp knock against the door.

A yawning dead silence was the only answer. It wasn't a particular surprise. Sasuke wasn't much of a talker, except when he was insulting Naruto or condescendingly explaining things—and Naruto had heard enough of both.

"Oh god, Naruto," Sakura said, looking hastily around, "don't start yelling like that when you talk to Sasuke-kun, okay? The nurses—" she stopped suddenly, her eyes narrowing to thin green slits of suspicion. "Oh," she muttered. "They haven't come by at all, have they?—_Oh_. Naruto—"

"Come on!" he said, and opened the door, stepping into the room with Sakura right behind him. "Hey! Teme, you awake?"

He was prepared for Sasuke to glare and snap at him again, so long as he didn't try electrocuting him—damn, that had been painful. But—he squinted, saw Sasuke outlined by moonlight, Sasuke leaning against the windowsill with his arms crossed over his chest, and the dark-haired boy only sounded bored. "What are you two doing here?"

The window itself was wide open with the breeze softly ruffling the abandoned sheets on the bed, and Sakura gasped a little. "Sasuke-kun!" Worry was evident in Sakura's face as she came forward; but more evident to Naruto was the seeming _wrongness_ of the situation, the strain that filtered through her motion, unnoticeable except to the team members who'd spent a year together in an awkward muddle of a group, and in doing so had become more than the sum of their lives could ever show. "You shouldn't get out of bed like that, you'll get a cold—"

Sakura's hand was curiously close to her weapons pouch, and that, more than anything else, gave Naruto the best idea of what was happening. He caught the sudden hand gesture she made behind her back—_there's genjutsu here, Naruto_, it communicated.

_Damn_!

"I won't," Sasuke said, and the coldness of his voice made Sakura stop short. He looked annoyed. "You're not supposed to be here right now at all—"

"—Why are you acting so normal?" Naruto blurted out. _I was fighting you only a few hours ago, and you're like—nothing's happened_.

"What are you talking about? Idiot," sneered Sasuke. Naruto couldn't see his face clearly, but Sasuke's tone rankled at him.

_Sasuke, you—you. You don't act the way I thought you'd act_.

And Sakura didn't like what was going on, because—but. Why would anyone pretend to be Sasuke?

Unless this had something to do with—_fuck no, Orochimaru the freaky snake man_.

"We—just wanted to come visit you," Sakura said, bewildered and wary. "You never like to talk to anyone, Sasuke-kun, but—you know," her voice wavered, then hardened, "we wanted to come anyway, so _there_."

"Che. Go away." Sasuke turned his face to the side dismissively.

Sakura bowed her head almost meekly before tilting her head in Naruto's direction, her bright, sharp green eyes landing on him.

Naruto paused, then nodded imperceptibly. _I don't know who'd think they can trick us, but—_

"Get the best opening you can," Sakura whispered, discreetly locking her fingers together.

He let out his breath sharply and clenched his fists. _You. This isn't right_. "Oi! Don't you dare ignore us!" he shouted. "Look at me, you bastard!"

Sasuke raised his head with an air of boredom. "Just shut up, usuratonkachi," he said irritably. "I'm not in the mood to talk to a dead-last."

Naruto scrutinized Sasuke's face with a bitter apprehension—one silent passing moment, the way his eyes were utterly, utterly blank and uncaring and completely dull—and _knew_. He lunged forward, whipping out a kunai and holding it to Sasuke's neck—_no, not Sasuke_—hissed, "Where's Sasuke? We're not that stupid, you know!"—heard behind him Sakura's "_Kai_!" before the impostor faded into thin air.

"Where'd he go?" Sakura snapped, rushing up to Naruto. "I thought there was something fishy, I kept getting the corridors mixed up, and I _know_ I'd never forget stuff like that—"

"So some shitheads got through the genjutsu after all," a voice said.

Naruto spun around; out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sakura drawing a handful of shuriken from her weapons pouch. "That was a pathetic jutsu!" he yelled._ It'll be easier to draw out whoever's there if we insult them_. "We know Sasuke better than you ever will—don't screw around with us like that!"

"Ha!" A kunoichi suddenly dropped into sight, with choppy reddish hair and wearing—_she's wearing the outfit that Orochimaru had when he fought baa-chan_, Naruto realized. "Big words from a little fucker like you."

"You—you're an Oto nin," said Naruto. "What the _hell_ do you want with Sasuke? What did you do to him?"

"And _where_ is Sasuke-kun?" Sakura added darkly. "Sasuke-kun doesn't need Orochimaru!" She glared at the Oto nin.

"Caught on to that fast, have you?" the kunoichi said dismissively. "We didn't have to do anything, he's already said he'll come with us." She laughed; it echoed in Naruto's ears with a high derisive mockery. "He's gone."

"_You're lying_!" Naruto snapped. Sakura's shuriken joined Naruto's kunai in a flash of metal toward the woman, who swiftly stepped out of the way, letting the weapons go _thud thud thud_, sinking deeply into the wall.

"You two are obnoxious brats, you know?" the ninja said, sneering at them. "No one else would have such a one-track mind to barge around through my genjutsu."

"Yeah, but guess what?" Naruto shot back loudly. "I'm Uzumaki Naruto, and your genjutsu's not stopping me!" He lunged at her suddenly, and—_just one more moment, forward, and_—

"Naruto, you idiot!" Naruto nearly plowed into Sakura, who pulled him up by his jumpsuit and looked enraged. "Watch where you're going! And _where did she go_?"

"What the—"

"You're still stuck within my genjutsu, if your brains aren't shitty enough yet to know what I'm doing," came the comment, floating from behind the door. "Can't even figure out who's your friend and who's your enemy, what a piece of shit you are."

Naruto ignored her, stood back-to-back with Sakura and scanned the room. _The door's closed, it was open when we came into this place_—"The door, Sakura-chan!"—Naruto flung open the door with a kunai held ready, only—he was staring back into the room, Sakura standing there, even though he'd just come from the room, and she'd been there too—_the hell, what happened to the hallway_?

"Sakura-chan!" he shouted.

"Yeah, Naruto?" both the Sakura in front of him and behind him chorused, and that was when Naruto's eyes widened, because _fuck_—

"Hard to figure out which one's which from Tayuya's jutsu, hmm?" a completely different voice said behind him. "But it won't matter, not now anyway—"

—and the brutal chop to the base of Naruto's neck sent him reeling. He stumbled and turned around sharply, trying to blink away the spots dancing in front of his eyes.

He heard the kunoichi call, "Kidoumaru! Stop fooling around with them, I was going to—" and more words that were indistinguishable, heard through a mist that dulled the voices to a low roar.

"Okay," he said, balancing unsteadily, and brought his hands together in a familiar seal. "Kage—"

"Not now, I said," the ninja named Kidoumaru said—

Unconsciousness embraced Naruto at the next hit, surrounding him like a blackened shroud.

**oOo**

Sasuke stopped at the side of the last roadside bench on the way out of Konoha. There was really no reason to do so, only it had been hard to carry her to the bench, and afterward he'd dreaded Naruto showing up as well—

But _waitnowhat_?—he hadn't been carrying anyone, and wasn't about to start carrying anyone, and—

_You really are annoying_.

_Thank you_.

Sasuke realized suddenly that his jaw had tensed so much that his teeth were beginning to ache. "Hn," he said, and kept walking; kept his mind carefully, carefully blank, because then perhaps he would not have to think of the sudden scenes and sights and words that did not match up in his memories, for the unexplainable change of his own remembrances was what scared him most. If he couldn't even remember the way Itachi had spoken to him—

_You lack hatred_, he'd told him so clearly, but—_to kill them and watch them die_, he'd said as well, Sasuke remembers, in the rain with Amaterasu finally fading out, _that is our fate_, and in that fleeting second Sasuke looks into Itachi's face and sees no indifference, sees—

_No more_, Sasuke thought harshly, and shut out the memory—the false, false memory, because he would never admit that some part of him did not want his brother dead—his idolized brother, the focus of all his childhood envy and love.

_I will do whatever it takes_; the phrase echoed in Sasuke's mind, his own personal mantra.

The Sound Four was waiting for him not too far from Konoha. When he came close, he could hear Jiroubou saying in a displeased manner, "Orochimaru-sama didn't want any excess commotion happening here, and now you've gone and done this—"

"Oh, stop being such a baby about it!" Tayuya shot back fiercely. "Kidoumaru made sure they're knocked out, and," here her voice took on a mocking tone, "we didn't have any casualties, we didn't kill anyone like Orochimaru-sama ordered, we just screwed around with future hospital patients, so pull that stick out of your fat ass and shut the _fuck_ up!—"

Sasuke wondered what she meant by future hospital patients, but—it was none of his business, anyway. He had no reason to care about random civilians who were dumb enough to walk around and be caught by restless Sound nin.

"Sasuke-sama's here," said Sakon, rising from the place where he'd been sitting under a tree. "Tayuya, shut the fuck up yourself."

Tayuya only snorted. Kidoumaru smirked.

"We've been waiting for you," Jiroubou said, looking supremely unruffled by Tayuya's tirade moments before.

"I noticed," Sasuke replied pointedly. He slid his hands in his pockets; his right hand brushed briefly against the folded up picture that lay there.

(_There's nothing more to bring._

—"_That's what you say—but you're a bad liar," and Itachi smiles_.)

"Let's go," Sasuke said, and the forest stretched wide before him as he went forward.

* * *

The chapter title is adapted from:

_Let me also wear  
Such deliberate disguises  
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves  
In a field  
Behaving as the wind behaves  
No nearer_—  
—T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"

The genjutsu battle? In short, Tayuya plays with their mind's perceptions and Kidoumaru crashes the party. :P Ahh, I hope it worked out all right. The second scene was the hardest to write, hands down.


	9. 8: those left behind

**8 – those left behind**

"You didn't make too much of a mess, I hope," Jiroubou muttered to Tayuya as they leapt from branch to branch. "We don't need someone already raising the alarm about us."

Tayuya's mouth twisted up in a smirk. "I didn't leave the usual kind of mess, if that's what you're yapping about," she replied. "I don't need to draw blood—best damn part of dying is the shock of dying. Kidoumaru did what he liked, but he's an idiot when he fights. That dumb-looking boy—the jinchuuriki, the one Kabuto told us about? Insane healing factor?"

"He's out?" Jiroubou interrupted. "He won't be up anytime soon?"

"Damn yeah. A girl too, she won't last long. But anyway, there Kidoumaru went, just playing around with the jinchuuriki like some stupid brat."

_And you don't_? "You know Orochimaru-sama said not to make too much noise and not to kill them—"

"Ha, we didn't kill them—it's up to them whether or not they're going to kick off and get stuck in the ground. And goddamnit, we made sure they'd go out quietly."

Jiroubou frowned. "You mentioned the shock of dying," he said. "Don't stretch it out so long—you depend too much on your genjutsu, Tayuya—"

"Like you depend too much on your blubber?" she shot back, pulling up her right sleeve; Jiroubou caught a quick glimpse of a seal, glaringly red against her shoulder. "It's screwing her over right now, don't talk shit like that, fatass!"

At another time and place, he might've reprimanded her for her language, but instead he exhaled with an irritated huff and did not reply. Tayuya had a remarkable lack of self-control when it came to swearing, and he didn't want her speaking more loudly than she usually did.

_How long will it take before Konoha figures out that he's gone? We need to return to Orochimaru-sama as soon as possible so he can have his new container, if we make good time_…

The Uchiha was a dark blur in front, Sakon and Kidoumaru flanking him on both sides. He moved swiftly, silently, to the point where his efficiency bled into the realm of involuntary movement, moving for the sake of moving.

Jiroubou noted that the boy hadn't looked back once.

**oOo**

The bed had been upended sometime during the fight, when the kunoichi had simply slammed it against the wall. It nearly smashed into Sakura, who jumped away from the wood splinters that flew in the air.

_How did she do that? Who has the kind of strength like that_? Sakura winced, wiping at her stinging cheek; her hand came away smeared in a light trail of blood. _And where's Naruto? I haven't heard him shouting—and Sasuke-kun_—

She barely ducked the fist that slammed into the wall above her, eyes wide as the plaster fell in bits and pieces on her hair. _Don't get distracted, don't get distracted_—she crouched down low, dodging the next punch, and barreled between the Oto nin's legs, slashing at them with her kunai in both hands as she slid through, and _ha_!—it'd worked, and now the woman was turning around, her mouth no longer curved up, no longer so mocking and dismissive. There had been a look in her eyes reminiscent of a cat playing with a mouse, drawing out the struggle and milking it for all the cruel amusement she could—only Sakura wouldn't play the victim.

_I can fight too_, Sakura thought fiercely, a growing, flushed sensation running through her body that pooled in the hollow of her neck and almost felt like it was choking her—her throat searing, touched by the fleeting brush of fire and the adrenaline that went to her brain with a wordless, roaring, inexplicable joy.

_We won't let Sasuke-kun go so easily_.

"Don't—underestimate—me," she said, breathing heavily. "Don't underestimate any of us—you don't know how we Konoha nin work."

The other ninja bared her teeth in a mirthless grin. "I don't need to know how you fuckers work," she snapped bluntly. "All I need to do is _kill you_."

The sweep of air past Sakura's face was all the warning she had before the kick caught her in the chest and sent her flying back. She hit the ground, the kunai knocked out of her hands by the impact. Still—_keep moving, don't be a sitting target_, some old Academy lesson flashed through her mind—and she rolled to the side as part of the floor buckled under another punch. _Why hasn't anyone noticed what's going on? Is she using genjutsu_? Sakura thought, scrambling to her feet. _And where's Naruto_? Naruto, who had his own special talent for making commotion—and surely someone must have heard the wall cracking, the floor cracking, her kunai and shuriken clattering.

And if Sasuke was not in the village—

—if Sasuke had left.

(Left her and Naruto and Kakashi-sensei behind, _that's not Sasuke-kun, she's lying, they took him away by force and he wouldn't do that_!—but almost everything was possible for Sasuke-kun, and she could not deny this possibility either—)

Then this Oto nin was just playing for time, and Sakura needed to simply get out of the fight as soon as possible. The most important thing was making sure that the others knew.

She shook off the uneasiness rising up in her, that something simply felt _wrong_ about this, that it seemed too real and not real enough all at once—

_The door_—

"Don't count on leaving here that way. Time's up, you pathetic piece of _shit_!" Her opponent darted between her and the door, crouched in an aggressive stance with a blazing look on her face. Her eyes were narrowed and the line of her mouth was set hard and thin.

_I shouldn't have been so obvious about that_, Sakura thought in frustration. _We've been going at each other for—oh god, how long, how long has Sasuke-kun been gone_? "Don't block my way!—" even before she finished speaking, she'd already launched herself to the side of the Oto nin, in a feint so she'd go that way and—Sakura palmed her shuriken grimly—

She didn't notice the smirk on the other's face.

—and _da-dum_ went her heart, _da-dum_ echoing in her ears, and pain flaring out among her ribs.

Sakura breathed, and the stabbing, searing feeling that had crowded her head twisted upon itself and compressed into a thick, congealed mass at her chest. She looked down and saw the kunai first, pale and seeming almost insubstantial as it was buried to the handle in her—_that's my kunai_, she realized dimly, _that's mine, she picked it up?_—

—she looked down and saw the blood.

_No_, some quiet, implacable voice spoke in her mind. _This is not real_.

"You won't leave this place by the door." The kunoichi's voice came like a ruthless slap to Sakura's ears—"there's better ways to get rid of trash, how about the window?"

Bright red hair and a cruel glee on her face, pushing the kunai deeper, deeper, Sakura limp with a dazed shock—_no, no no no_—and even as Sakura forced herself not to look at the blood and tried to wrestle control of the kunai away from the Oto nin, she felt the windowsill behind her, then open air, and—

—she fell.

—wished she hadn't started to read the books on medical jutsu—she was bleeding, bleeding, blood in the chest cavity or air in the chest cavity or both—_hemothorax, pneumothorax, hemopneumothorax_, in brightly bolded letters and capitals to boot that trailed across the pages—"the resulting condition is the repression of respiration"—cold names, cold facts, but how could they ever describe the fear?—_not like this, not like this_—

—the wind wrapped around her harshly, leaving frigid fingerprints upon her back, her face, her heart—

—_what floor was I on?—chances of breaking arms or legs_?—

(_chances of _dying?)

The impact was quick, and sharp, and merciless.

With the agonizing crack that shot through her—the ground, _I am gone, am I dead_?—came a brilliant blinding flash across her vision, everything around her flickering from _existence_ to a pure, pure white—

_mom dad ino sensei sasuke naruto no no_ no

In the pure white silence of an instant—

(_don't underestimate me_!

_is she using genjutsu_?)

—Sakura realized the truth of her own reality—_I can't die yet_, she thought, all the foreboding of death abruptly gone, because—_do not make me die, I won't go out like this_!

A wordless burst of chakra, like a explosion of stars in her mind, and—

_I won't die_.

—looking at the blankness, the oblivion, and Sakura suddenly thought, _I think I see_—

_We won't let Sasuke-kun go so easily_.

_You are dying_, a nameless voice said to her, _you are dead dead dead DIE_—

"No," Sakura whispered, and the white silence shattered.

**oOo**

She was staring up at the hospital ceiling. Not outside, she wasn't outside on the ground at all—there was something on her forehead? Sakura reached up with her right hand to pull it off—a small square sheet of paper, with characters painted all around it, glowing red and now turning black—_looks like a seal_—and something was running alongside the left side of her body, something sticky and liquid along her arm and face—

Sakura turned her head to the left, yellow hair coming into sight. "Naruto!" she exclaimed, relief rushing through her—_I was right, I didn't die, it was genjutsu after all_—(she carefully did not think about that moment of utter terror, falling through the air)—"Naruto!"

He lay face down, didn't respond, and it was only then that she saw the strangely-shaped weapons embedded in his back. She jerked up her left hand to look at it; it was dripping with blood.

Sakura knew, instinctively, that it was not her blood.

"Kai!" she gasped, because he wouldn't let himself be killed. Too loud, too obnoxious, too much orange and stupid boyish posturing and "Sakura-_chan_!" and just too much _Naruto_ that he couldn't be killed. Only—this was not an illusion, this was real, and—

She got to her feet, ignoring the sharp twinge in her chest—_must be left over from the genjutsu, don't bother_!—and ran to the door, flinging it open with an incredible force born out of necessity. "Someone!" she screamed, throat scratchy and the dryness attempting to choke down her words—"get the Hokage!"

No answer—_did the Oto nin somehow manage to deflect attention from this section? Hell_!

Sakura darted down the corridor, her heart beating ridiculously fast (_like when I died_—) and her face wet with Naruto's blood and her own tears.

_Naruto, we need to go after Sasuke-kun, you can't die_—

**oOo**

Tayuya hissed as she felt the seal on her shoulder flare momentarily in a searing flash, and pulled up her sleeve._Fuck_. It was black now, which meant her genjutsu had ended, but—

"What happened?" Sakon called back.

The seal only hurt if her genjutsu was broken; otherwise, if it didn't sting, the victim ought to have died from the sheer psychological shock of what the genjutsu created.

So the girl was alive after all.

_Fuck_.

"Go faster, dipshit!" she barked. "Konoha's going to figure out that he's gone soon—" she glanced at the Uchiha boy—"and then it'll be harder for us to make it to Orochimaru-sama on time!"

"I told you," said Jiroubou next to her, who'd noticed her seal and what it meant, "you depend too much on your genjutsu—"

"Shut _up_," said Tayuya. "Next time I'll kill her for sure."

**oOo**

"—showed a great deal of willpower to be able to break out of the genjutsu—"

"I should've realized it earlier," said a voice—Sakura-chan, sounding very small and tired. "I didn't break it earlier and alert everyone—"

_It's Sakura-chan! She's all right_! were Naruto's first thoughts, and then—_where'd those stupid Orochimaru lapdogs go? Damn it, what happened to Sasuke_?

"Don't beat yourself up about it, this is the first time I've seen genjutsu used in combination with fuuinjutsu—Naruto!" Tsunade-baa-chan turned around. "You're awake now."

"Naruto!" Then Sakura was there, strain lining her face and voice and a quiet relief as well.

"Sakura-chan," Naruto muttered groggily as he sat up—ow, what had that crazy spider nin done to him? he'd hit him with something in the back and then knocked him out again—"you're okay?"

"I'm fine, you're the one in bed!" Sakura shouted, but she didn't seem mad, as she usually was when she raised her voice—"I thought you were going to die! There was so much _blood_—Tsunade-sama had to come in and make sure you were all right—" Her voice broke and faltered.

Naruto looked down. "I wouldn't die," he said. "I don't die like that, Sakura-chan, don't worry."

"It seems the Oto nin's blades had chakra running through them," said Tsunade as she crossed her arms over her chest. "It interfered with your own chakra flow, Naruto, so you… couldn't heal as quickly as you normally would." She gave Naruto a significant look.

The meaning didn't go over his head. It was the Kyuubi's healing ability, after all. _Damn, so that's how that Oto nin managed to keep me from just healing and fighting again_.

Also. Wait. "Hey, where's Sasuke? Where'd he go?"

Sakura's face fell. "He's gone," she said quietly. "He's not in Konoha anymore."

"_What_?"

Tsunade looked even more irritated. "I've already called in Nara Shikamaru to head a retrieval mission for him. Since we don't know for certain if he went willingly or not—"

_What_. "Sasuke wouldn't leave!" Naruto snapped. "All that blah blah blah Orochimaru was blabbering about getting power, Sasuke doesn't need that!"

"Well, it depends on whether or not your friend knows that himself," Tsunade said tersely, but her face softened. "We'll do what we can, Naruto."

Naruto looked at Sakura; they exchanged silent glances. _Sasuke_—Naruto remembered the fake Sasuke saying, _Go away. Just shut up, usuratonkachi_. Dark eyes and dark hair and the smirk that was too much arrogance, too much carefully-masked anger—_and by then, the real Sasuke must've gone. The _bastard. "All right then," said Naruto, and began to swing himself out of bed—he would get the bandages off as he left—

"What are you doing?" Tsunade stopped him from getting out.

"I gotta go talk to Shikamaru! I mean, you said he's the one leading the mission, right?"

"No," said Tsunade bluntly. "You were just attacked by Oto nin and you're still recovering, I don't think you're ready to go—"

"Tsunade-baa-chan, I'm _fine_! Just look at me—" _You can't keep me from going after him, he's my teammate_! Naruto thought. "And I have to beat him up when I find him for doing this too!"

"Nor Sakura," she continued. "The genjutsu is disorienting, and your heart might be more vulnerable to shocks because of it. Both of you are not fit for participating in the mission—"

"Tsunade-sama!" Sakura looked stunned. "I can do it—and Naruto can as well, if you'd just let us—"

"We're his teammates!" Naruto burst out. "He'll listen to us more than he would to anyone else! I mean, what, it's Shikamaru and other genin, that's _it_?"

"I'll send Kakashi out as well when he gets back from his mission, which should be soon," Tsunade replied. "You two will stay here."

"But—"

"That is an order," snapped Tsunade. "There are other things involved."

"Like what?" Naruto said challengingly. _And if there were other things involved, then we should know about them anyway_.

Tsunade merely glanced at him, before walking to the door. "Your chakra flow might still be somewhat disrupted from the effects of the blades," she said. "Don't move around too much."

The door shut behind her.

"… she won't let us go," said Sakura almost disbelievingly. "She won't let us go."

Naruto felt his nails dig into his palms. "That's stupid," he said. "I mean, I heal quickly, so I could do it. And Sakura-chan, what happened with this genjutsu?"

"Oh!" Sakura averted her gaze. "It tried to make me think I'd died, that's all."

"It made you think you _died_?" Naruto stood up. "Wait, what did it—"

"That's all," Sakura cut him off. "I broke it, all right? That's all."

Naruto noticed how she shivered, just a little—_she's pretending it didn't matter as much as it must have… but Sakura-chan doesn't seem like she wants to talk about it, so_—"Okay," he said. "Hey, where's my jumpsuit?"

Sakura looked startled. "Over there," she said, pointing to the side. "But _Naruto_—what are we going to do about Sasuke-kun now—"

"Of course we're going after him!" Naruto gritted his teeth. "We can't let him get away!"

"Tsunade-sama said she wouldn't let us—"

Naruto turned his head and gave Sakura a hard look. "I don't listen to everything people say," he said flatly. "It takes more than that to stop Uzumaki Naruto!"

Sakura stared at him for a moment, the corners of her mouth lifting up into a smile. There was something bright and infinitely resolute in the way her eyes narrowed and the way she straightened up. "All right," she said. "I'll see about getting supplies. And if we join up with Shikamaru and the others later, I don't think they could really force us to come back."

Naruto blinked, then grinned. "Yeah, okay!" he said. "Don't take too long—we're going after him together!"

* * *

I hope the whole situation with the genjutsu made sense. As far as I can tell from canon, there are two requirements for the implementation of genjutsu: 1) that the chakra flow of the victim must be manipulated in some fashion, and 2) that the caster must be able to sense the victim's chakra. Regarding Tayuya, since the Sound Four also seems to be pretty adept with seals, I thought it would be plausible for her to use seals in genjutsu as well. Basically, the seal would act as a conduit between her and the victim's chakra, even when she's far away (and would otherwise be unable to sense the chakra due to distance). Tayuya put the seal on Sakura to activate the genjutsu, employing the idea of literally making people believe they die. Sakura simply had enough willpower and determination to defy what she originally perceived as "reality" and break it. She's trying to ignore the effects of her experience with "death," but I'll probably touch on those in the next few chapters. It's not so easy to recover from things like that.

As for Naruto—Kidoumaru had the ability to work chakra into his weapons, as seen during his fight with Neji. I'm working under the assumption that the chakra in his "blades" (I'm thinking of the ones he uses when he's playing "guess the real one" with Naruto's kage bunshin on the spider web) would be able to disrupt the Kyuubi's abilities to heal quickly, and then Kidoumaru proceeded to knock Naruto out.

Tsunade is being uncooperative. :P Part of it is due to Naruto and Sakura actually fighting the Oto nin before the retrieval mission is put into play; in canon, after all, neither of them received serious injuries beforehand (Sakura was knocked out by Sasuke; Naruto didn't even know). Also, there's a lot more uncertainty about what exactly Sasuke is up to this time. Her POV will be appearing soon, I think.


	10. 9: and after this our exile

**9 – and after this our exile**

_There will be a high probability of running into trouble_, the Hokage had said to him, her face stern and contemplative, even as he'd stood there with his face slack in astonishment, the prospects of a drowsy, lazy day fast vanishing.

_Oto nin. Sasuke. The _hell.

Then realizing that he'd have to lead this mission and make sure they came through successful—staring at Tsunade—_no jounin or chuunin, just genin? Konoha really is short on available ninja—this isn't going to help_…

Now Shikamaru glanced around at the genin he'd gathered on short notice. _Half an hour to slap together some people for a team and go after Sasuke—how _troublesome.

Still, there had been no question in his mind about what to do once he'd learned about the situation—Sasuke was a shinobi from Konoha. Shikamaru himself was a shinobi from Konoha, as they all were.

There was nothing else to be said about the issue; they were ninja who followed the Will of Fire. They did not let comrades go easily.

"—all right, we'd better get going!" Kiba said, jabbing his thumb at the forest. "Shikamaru, are you going to stop watching the clouds soon? Let's _go_!"

"Hey!" Chouji frowned and opened another bag of chips with an inordinately loud _pop_ and more force than was necessary. "The Hokage picked Shikamaru to lead the mission, Kiba; we need to listen to his instructions. We can't run off after the Oto nin without any plans."

Kiba made a disgruntled face, but didn't say anything. Neji shifted slightly and said, "Tell us the strategy and plan, then. It seems we'll have to be on the lookout for ambushes."

"An ambush is likely," said Shikamaru, and added silently, _Very likely, irritating as it is. Time to settle everything_. He'd been mulling over this while rounding up the team members. "Since we're following the Oto nin, there will probably be some traps. They have the advantage in striking first. So! We'll be moving in single line formation—Kiba, you'll be the forward scout. You've traveled the most around the country and know the terrain best. Also, your sense of smell will help us pick up on Sasuke's scent. If there are any traps set by the enemy, you can detect them as well."

Kiba bared his teeth; the red triangular markings on his face lent a certain fierceness to the way he nodded and spoke. "Akamaru and I can take care of that, no problem!"

_Good, no insubordination for now. Kiba means well, but he's not the kind who dances to anyone's beck and call_. "I'll be second, as the squad leader, so I can give orders and signal if necessary. Watch for my hand signals—"

As he outlined the rest of the formation—Chouji behind him, Neji as the rear scout (Lee was looking rather crestfallen that he wasn't going)—Shikamaru was thinking furiously. _Tsunade-sama told me she'd send some backup when other shinobi got back from their missions, so the main objective for now is to catch up as quickly as possible and slow the Oto nin down. We just need to keep them preoccupied and unable to continue with Sasuke. Also, it's not certain whether or not Sasuke went with them by choice, so_—

"Let me check your weapons," he said, motioning to his own weapons pouch. "Any more questions?"

"Yes," said Neji shortly, crossing his arms. "Where's Naruto? I'm surprised you didn't bring him along." He blinked pale eyes and gave Shikamaru a pointed look.

"Yeah, you'd think he'd be running around and blowing a fuse at Sasuke leaving him out," Kiba added. Akamaru barked.

"Naruto-kun and Sakura-san should both be here," Lee broke in, his eyebrows drawn together anxiously. "They have more than enough youthful spirit to bring back their teammate!"

"Ah," Shikamaru said, stiffening at the subject; he remembered the Hokage's voice, veiled with concern: _Naruto was stabbed several times in the back, while Sakura had to break her way out of a genjutsu that simulated her own death. Don't worry about them, they're stabilized and in no danger for the present—keep your mind on the mission. You _must_ stay focused_.

_I… should probably downplay this a bit so they don't think too much about the enemies' capabilities_. "They already confronted the Oto nin, as a matter of fact. The Hokage told me that Naruto and Sakura stopped by the hospital last night to visit Sasuke, but he was gone by then—they ended up fighting with the enemy nin, and they're both recovering right now. But Tsunade-sama made it clear she preferred they not come along."

"They're in the hospital?" Lee's eyes were rounder, his mouth slightly open in surprise. He glanced down at his crutch, a reminder of his own time there.

"They're fine right now, but they did suffer some damage," Shikamaru continued without skipping a beat; he couldn't afford for the others to dwell on the fact that some of their own had already fought and failed against the Oto nin. _Bad enough that this was brought up in the first place_. "From what Tsunade-sama told me, one of the Oto nin specializes in genjutsu, so we'll have to watch out for that. Another one channels chakra into threads—like spiderwebs, that is—and can shape the threads into weapons, such as knives. He's got multiple pairs of arms," he added. "We don't know for certain how many of them there are, but for now our goal is to slow them down—there will be some reinforcements coming when more shinobi are available. Make sure to leave an obvious trail behind us, by the way."

He paused, looking around. There was no trace of humor in their faces now. "Lastly," Shikamaru said, "this... is the most important thing."

The others did not say anything—they watched him with a quiet, burning intensity.

(_Two of us were hurt. One of us has left._

_The enemy will pay_.)

—"Sasuke wasn't a close friend of mine, nor is he someone particularly important, but he's one of us, a shinobi of Konoha, and that's all that matters." _That's all that matters in the end—he is our comrade, however distant we were. This is why we're doing this_. "Even me—I can't afford to be lazy about this. I'm responsible for your lives." He stopped suddenly, the last sentence sliding back down and lodging in his throat, his mind, his heart.

He was responsible for their lives. For _all_ their lives.

_I'll have to remember that_.

Kiba laughed abruptly, breaking the momentary silence and concealing a tint of nervousness in his own loud bark of amusement. "Ha, now you're talking! You're shaping up to that chuunin rank after all!"

Lee flashed a grin at him and gave him a thumbs-up. "This will all go well!" he said. "If only I could also come—" disappointment flitted across his face briefly "—but I know you will do your best! You will be _brilliant_!" Neji only gave Lee his trademark Overly Blank Look and hmphed.

Shikamaru glanced at Chouji almost instinctively. His teammate caught his look and smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling and the swirls on his cheeks rounding themselves out—between the two of them, there was no need for words.

_I will do this—we'll all do this_, he told himself, and something lightened in his chest. _Otherwise mom would be nagging me about being a failure, and her nagging is hell on earth. What a headache _that _would be_—

"All right," he said. "Everyone, weapons check before we leave."

As he inspected the equipment they had, he wondered how far they would go. Somewhere—somewhere out there, he thought—Uchiha Sasuke was moving farther and farther away, vanishing into the distance.

They would just have to catch up and get their mission done.

_After this, I'm _definitely_ going cloud-watching for the time I'm missing today_.

**oOo**

In the brightening daylight, Sasuke felt oddly exposed, laid bare and flayed open under the piercing rays that mottled the tree leaves—shadowed light along the underside of the branches; glaring light in pinpricks upon the ground; yellowing light that took on a faint sheen of red when he looked at the world through red-and-black eyes (no reason, really—_nothing more than a whim, just a whim_). Red, like blood and death and _that chakra_—

"—your reflexes are _awful_!" Naruto says, with his breath rushing out in a twisted choking sound, but all he can see is the bloody red, flaring in his old friend's eyes and licking around his hair and trickling down—

—_your reflexes are_ awful, Naruto had told him on the hospital rooftop, his eyes blue as the sky.

These stupid things he kept seeing—_what the hell is going on_? Tsukuyomi—whatever Itachi had done—it couldn't possibly last this long. _What else would this be? Naruto looked older, but he's_—Sasuke floundered, grasping for some other description, and failed—_but he's not that old. Just_… As he passed through a particularly bright patch of sunlit forest, Sasuke winced at the sudden, sharp pain in his eyes—he probably wasn't accustomed to how bright the light was—_his eyes couldn't be hurting, couldn't possibly be stinging and bleeding because of_—

—and deactivated the Sharingan. The pain receded, a barely noticeable throbbing at his temples.

Sakon, who had been traveling in front of Sasuke, slowed in his path through the foliage and suddenly dropped out of sight. Sasuke blinked; frowned; followed him down into the clearing. Jiroubou, Tayuya, and Kidoumaru announced their own arrivals with three soft _thumps_ behind him.

"What's this about?" Sasuke asked bluntly. If they were trying to get away from Konoha, what was the point of standing still?

"Sasuke-sama, I think this is a good place," Sakon said, his words a complete non-answer. "We're far enough from Konoha for now."

"What now?" muttered Sasuke. Sakon seemed to delight in stretching out the suspense—_goddamn him, just get to the_ point!—

"You'll understand everything once you hear what I have to say." An unknown voice, that sounded as though it were muffled by something—

Unknown? No, he knew the voice, oh god _he knows it_. _His name, what's his name_?—the knowledge slipping away from his thoughts, unwilling to cooperate, but—

_Sharingan. He had the _Sharingan.

—"Sasuke-sama, there's really no need for you to activate your Sharingan," Sakon said, wariness in his words. "This is simply the last order from Orochimaru-sama."

_I couldn't care less about Orochimaru_, Sasuke wanted to sneer. _That person_—"Spit it out," he snapped, jerking around to face Sakon.

An amused smile curled Sakon's mouth. "Of course. Anyway—before we reach Orochimaru-sama, you must die once."

(_I have died before, I can die again_, a voice whispered to him like wind whistling through the leaves, and faded away.)

"You want me to die. Once?" _Only once?—wait, why_ only? Perhaps he was supposed to be more surprised than this, Sasuke thought. Perhaps he was supposed to move back or look confused.

He didn't feel any astonishment at all, only the intangible sense of _this was said, this was done. Yes, yes yes yes_.

Sakon pulled out a little bottle—_Seishingan, that's what he called it back then_—"Seishingan," Sakon said. "We'll have you take this." Seishingan was what he'd said a moment ago, and yet it sounded familiar. Some before, sometime, someplace, some past. _Back then_.

Sasuke had remained utterly silent—he caught a glimpse of perplexity that crossed Sakon's face at his lack of an answer. Ah. Something to say—"What's that for?" he asked, trying to force some interest into his words.

"You've got a level one curse seal right now," Tayuya said. Sasuke turned his head to look at her and caught sight of her face, an infinitely bored expression in her eyes and a perpetual scowl that pushed down the corners of her mouth. Then she added, "That'll move you up to level two, but that also means you get a _shitload_ of contamination before you end up dying." The boredom was replaced by an anticipatory glee, as if—_she wants to see me die_?

Well—Tayuya was not the kind of person who had fluffy happy feelings for anyone, and by now Sasuke had received her message, loud and clear, that she did not like him. (She didn't seem to like anyone. This was not at all a surprise.) Juugo, on the other hand—"he talks to birds like he's trying to be some freaky holy forest spirit," Suigetsu says while upending the water bottle over his head, "but then again anyone who willingly runs to Orochimaru's got _something _crazy in them—"

_Juugo? Sui—who_? Inexplicably, he thought of Zabuza in the Wave Country at Tazuna's bridge—Zabuza and Haku—Haku and his needles flying at—

_That doesn't matter, don't think about that_—the moment he'd come to Kakashi's place and heard, there'd been only two warring thoughts that leapt to his mind—_my brother's here_, and _he's after Naruto_—

—_I don't care. I don't care at all_.

Sasuke nearly missed Sakon's next words and pulled his concentration back with an effort. "Basically," Sakon said—he shot Tayuya an irritated look at her interruption—"to control the level two curse seal, your body needs more time to adjust to it. You'll be on the same level as us once it's over." He shook the bottle gently and let the drug clatter back and forth. "After you take this, there will only be a few minutes before you die."

The area between his shoulder blades was getting itchy; he let out a quiet hiss, trying to will the itch away along with his stupid, _stupid_ visions (people he didn't know, things he hadn't seen—). "And what are you going to do when I die?" Sasuke asked skeptically. _It's too easy for people to die—that's how things always are_.

"Our barrier jutsu will reduce the side effects once you've reached level two. You'll be in a temporary coma instead." Sakon placed the bottle in his hands; Sasuke stared down at it, the glass smooth and cool against his palm, sliding past the calluses on his fingers as he rubbed the bottle warily. It glinted at him, almost seductive in the clearness of the glass—just one layer that lay between him and level two. Between him and _power_.

(Between him and Itachi. _You lack hatred_, his brother had said as he held Sasuke against the wall. _You lack_—

"The truth about Itachi—")

_Just _do _it_.

In one swift movement, he dumped the drug out in his hand and swallowed hard—burning down his throat, driving out the words, the thoughts, _the truth about Itachi_—

—"Sasuke-sama, don't do that so fast!"—

_And that was just what he wanted_.

Faintly, through a haze of roiling pain that dug into his shoulder at the seal and crawled agonizingly across his chest and back—he heard someone yelling, "Hurry up, you idiots, don't be so damn slow!" and scrolls pulled out, rustling—once, they'd been camping out under the night sky, and when Naruto and Sakura were asleep he'd listened to the quiet breeze that danced among the trees before he finally dozed off—once, once upon a time,_before_—

—the wind carries the silence and smell of death to him—he can't stand, he doesn't have the strength to stand—before everything explodes in a brilliant wave of red—

He wasn't standing anymore; didn't have the strength to stand. Black swept across him in a blazing wildfire that etched curling patterns into his skin. Sasuke couldn't scream; distantly, he felt himself being lifted and settled inside something—

Something he knew, something familiar. The panels of wood that pressed down and around him—he recognized this.

_Yes yes yes. I remember_, said a strange voice, unfamiliar and familiar at once, tired and apathetic and bitter. _I was here_.

After that, Sasuke felt only the sensation of his skin burning under the writhing seal, his chest coiling tight with tension—heard the erratic beat of his heart—saw nothing.

* * *

Chapter title is from T.S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday."

… the yellowing light which took on a faint sheen of red when he looked at the world through red-and-black eyes (no reason all—_nothing more than a whim, just a whim_).**  
-Ch. 307** ("At a Whim")

"You'll understand everything once you hear what I have to say." An unknown voice, that sounded as though it were muffled by something—  
In one swift movement, he dumped the drug out in his hand and swallowed it—burning down his throat, driving out the words, the thoughts, _the truth about Itachi_—  
_And that was just what he wanted_.  
-**Ch. 398** ("Konoha's Beginnings") (speaking of which, omg 398 wtf omg)


	11. 10: unwind the winding path

**10 – unwind the winding path**

_"All I can say," Suigetsu mutters as he pokes at the fire, "is that your family is seriously fucked up."_

_There's nothing Sasuke can say to that; after all, it's true. So he grunts in reply._

_"Wow, you're more talkative than ever." Suigetsu makes a face as he flops onto his back and looks up at the sky. "You don't suppose he got dropped on his head as a little brat?" he asks the stars. "Or maybe Itachi ordered him to only say a word every other hour, and of course he was a good little boy and listened to his big brother."_

_Sasuke might've been stung into anger by Suigetsu's light mockery once, but not anymore-there is only an Itachi-shaped hole in his heart, and all things remotely Itachi pass through it with an unending silence, a wordless ache that flutters and lingers. He does not care to dwell on his brother for very long._

He is gone, _Sasuke repeats in his mind._ He is gone. Now there is just Madara.  
_  
And this—this is how he has always lived, running after the shadows of others to exact his own needy retribution. Itachi was his keystone, but Madara is a more than suitable replacement. If it was Itachi who struck the blow, it was also Madara who lurked in the background web of triggers and consequences._

I'm going to destroy the last of the Uchiha clan_, he thinks, and remembers a young boy who once wished to revive it. The irony stares at him and laughs in his face._

_He laughs back, bitterly, morbidly, with all the supremely bred cruelty that he has ever inflicted upon the withered possibilities of his old life._

_Suigetsu shoots him a glance and slurps his water. "Mental," he says._

**oOo**

"Lee-san, you said they started off in this direction?"

"Yes, that way." Lee flexed his arm, a look of concentration on his face as he tested its fitness. "Don't worry, my body is more than willing to be put to the task!"

Seeing Sakura's less-than-convinced face, he added, "Also, I made sure to bring the medicine since I'm supposed to take it." He grinned brightly and patted the flask with an earnestness that made Sakura smile.

"Tsunade-sama's going to be really angry at you, you know. You haven't had much time to recover from your surgery."

"It's my duty to help my friends!" Lee exclaimed again, teeth flashing and unrestrained exuberance in his every gesture. Sakura imagined Sasuke saying that in the exact same manner—and tried hard not to let out a shaky laugh.

"Baa-chan's going to be angry at us too, Sakura-chan, so I don't think it matters whether or not fuzzy eyebrows comes with us," Naruto added sheepishly. "They're expecting reinforcements, right? So they aren't bothering to cover their trail." He walked out along the tree branch and peered down, then jumped. "Right there!"

Sakura and Lee followed Naruto through the trees. It had been surprisingly easier than she'd expected to leave Konoha unnoticed, and not for the first time Sakura thought about how thin the Konoha nin were spread over all their missions. Even Kakashi-sensei wasn't around to read perverted books and be perpetually late.

_Kakashi-sensei has really bad timing for being absent. Figures._

They'd met Lee as they were leaving the hospital and as he was coming to see them. And once he'd heard what they were going to do—Well. She would have hated to be left behind and not be allowed to go after Sasuke-kun, and Lee was like that too.

"They didn't leave too long ago, did they?" Naruto shouted. "We can still catch up to them!"

"Probably!" Sakura pushed off the next tree branch with even more force. They were going at a faster pace than ninja normally would choose for traveling through the trees. Naruto had incredible stamina, and Lee had speed training, and Sakura—admittedly she had neither, at least not to the extent of the others, but she had learned how to use her chakra and energy as efficiently as she could. _I can keep up with this_, she told herself, determination weaving with her thoughts into a patchwork of complete will.

… _what were you _thinking, _Sasuke-kun? Or did they make you go_? The way that one kunoichi had spoken—it had sounded like Sasuke had decided to leave.

_I shouldn't listen to what she said_, Sakura thought. _She's the kind of person who loves to taunt others no matter what the truth is_.

-remembered her heart beating in her chest, twisting with the mockery and illusion and yet the real sense of_pain_.

She hated herself for doubting, but she doubted all the same.

Maybe Lee knew something about it. "Lee-san," she said, "so what did Shikamaru say during the mission briefing?"

Lee looked a little downcast. "Not very much. Just that you two had been injured, and Sasuke-kun was gone. He also told us about what we knew of the enemy—just how they fought. But you two know that best."

The sound of Sakura's breathing echoed heavily in her ears. "Oh," she said, half-hoping, half-dreading more. It depended on what that "more" entailed. "And—anything about how Sasuke-kun left?"

She noticed that even Naruto was landing more quietly, straining to pick up every word.

Lee said, "Nothing. We don't know what happened with that." He gave them an apologetic glance.

"Sasuke probably couldn't fight all of them at the same time like I could," Naruto said in front of her loudly. Sakura could hear the false levity in his voice. "So Sakura-chan, we get to be the great awesome knights who have to come to save stupid bastards from the enemy!"

Sakura snorted at the image. Lee, on the other hand, looked absolutely thrilled. "I completely agree, Naruto-kun!"

"One of the girls at the Academy used to keep dreaming about how Sasuke-kun would be this knight who would sweep her away and get married," she said, conveniently omitting the fact that the girl had been herself. _I suppose I understand more now than I did back then_. "Bright shining armor and everything. It wouldn't be like Sasuke-kun, though. Anyway, it's easier to move in green spandex." She grinned weakly.

"You are too _kind_, Sakura-san!" The energy Lee possessed suddenly seemed to increase tenfold. "Calling _me_ a knight!"

"_Sakura-chan_!" Naruto moaned as Lee passed by him.

They quickened their pace.

**oOo**

_"I've dealt with a lot of mental cases in my time," she says coolly, and tugs at her shorts. Her hair is more brilliantly colored red than ever before; when she touches her right temple, her hand comes away streaked with blood._

_Karin does not bat an eyelash as she stands over the disabled enemy nin. There is no inviting smile on her face, no fleeting, meaningful look which she would normally give to Sasuke (or as Suigetsu usually said, "Oh, you mean how she wants Sasuke's body—" before turning into a puddle of water to avoid major injury). "So let me deal with this," she tells him bluntly. "I deal with you guys every day anyway."_

_Sasuke runs his hand over the handle of his chokuto. It isn't every day that an unknown tries to track them down, but in any case he was utterly outmatched. In terms of numbers, their fight was not fair; but Team Hebi does not care for fairness. "Fine," he says lowly. "Get whatever information you can out of him, then do what you like. Well," he adds, "at least don't kill him. For now."_

_The corners of Karin's lips turn up as she walks to the left of the ninja, who glares mulishly and says nothing. "Hey there," she drawls. "I think you need a haircut, boy."_

Probably Akatsuki's fodder_, Sasuke reflects, and then thinks no more of it._

_Later, he waits while Karin browses through her notes of the man's ramblings on the nature of Akatsuki and its pursuit of the bijuu. "That looks very useful," Juugo comments as he looks over her shoulder._

_"Yeah, I'm surprised you even managed to get anything out of him, he clammed right up even when I watered his lungs," Suigetsu adds cheerfully._

_Karin rolls her eyes."I did run a prison, you know," she says, and her glasses glint in the sunlight. "I can make_anyone _scream_."

**oOo**

She was going to need more sake soon.

Tsunade peered into the jug and frowned, then set it aside and turned back to her desk. "I _despise_ paperwork," she said aloud to the empty office, as if the nearby coat rack was going to come to life and step forward to read and sign the papers for her. She supposed that with Shizune's absence it was easier to sleep and slack off—but her work was necessary.

Fixing Konoha after the attack was a headache, the village's need to keep mission requests coming in even more so (where else would they get the revenue?)—the council was being bitchy to test how much backbone she'd show them (but they'd see who was Hokage around here, oh they _would_), and to top it off, the commonly acknowledged Uchiha genius (_screw-up_, she grumbled to herself) had gone gallivanting off with the enemy. At least she'd sent that message to Suna—Suna owed them. If Naruto hadn't cared, and if the council members weren't so rabid about the Sharingan, she'd have sent hunter nin instead and said good riddance.

Okay, so the boy was young and he was an idiot. She'd been young and idiotic once upon a time, and everyone had their phases.

It didn't keep her from silently cursing Uchiha Sasuke for choosing to be an idiot at the most inappropriate times.

_All right, we don't actually _know_ that he chose to go_, Tsunade grudgingly noted. _I suppose I should be a nice, generous person and give him the benefit of the doubt, but there was no sign of struggle from him in the room, as best as I could make out._

_Should've made Jiraiya take the job of Hokage, then I could smack him every time he tried to creep off to the onsen. Stress relief. Damn it_.

And no sake. And—

—oh yes, Naruto. _Who's probably sneaking out about now_.

She would have preferred to keep him and Haruno Sakura out of this—emotions could screw with ninja on missions and blind them in certain circumstances—but she didn't have the resources. She simply _could not_ spare people to keep the two genin cooped up in their hospital room—how would she explain to them that they were on guard duty for pipsqueaks, instead of working on assigned missions? _She_ couldn't use up her own time to keep watch either—and Naruto was not the kind of person who listened to orders when he was hell-bent on something else.

_The best I could do was tell him to stay_, she thought to herself. _They might think there are people who know to stop them from leaving; perhaps Sakura'll be the voice of caution for Naruto. Something to slow them down, so by the time they're running out things might be over._

_Kakashi was the one who taught Sasuke during the chuunin exams, wasn't he? I'm going to give that lazy dog a piece of my mind for letting the boy brood like that_.

(She pointedly tried not to think about her own brooding for more than a decade.)

_More importantly_… Suppressing the urge to check the hospital, Tsunade spread out a map of the village. Considering that Oto nin had managed to get into the village without anyone the wiser, it meant that Konoha's security was currently about as competent as a monkey fishing for apples in the sky.

It would be hard to set up more checkpoints; more checkpoints automatically meant more ninja, more nonexistent Konoha ninja who were distinctly unavailable. She contemplated making the guards' sweeps of the village more frequent—but then that meant they would move more quickly and maybe miss something in their haste.

Then she briefly entertained the thought of assigning Konohamaru and the rest of the Academy students to guard duty. They would learn something about the drudgery in ninja work. However, their lack of experience would probably increase the probability of her having a headache. _No, not worth it at all. They'd spend the time goofing off anyway_—

The door opened.

—_like him, for instance_. "Kakashi," she said, looking up to see rumpled gray hair, a slanted hitai-ate. Kakashi, however, didn't look at all like he was in the mood for goofing off. "I assume you heard the news?"

"I just finished the last assigned mission and came back," he said tersely. The line of his mouth under the black mask was thin and straight. "Yes, I did."

The silence stretched out as he shifted his weight; Tsunade watched his face carefully. "I went to the hospital," he finally added. "I heard that Naruto and Sakura were injured, but they're not there anyway."

_What_. Tsunade twitched and tried hard not to follow her first instinct of smashing the sake jug. _No point in getting angry now_, she reminded herself. _You expected it_. (That expectation was probably what had saved the sake jug from an unfortunate demise.) "They've gone after Sasuke too," she said simply. "They wanted to. Nara Shikamaru's leading the team—the others are Hyuuga Neji, Akimichi Chouji, and Inuzuka Kiba."

"… What kind of a team is _that_?"

Kakashi's tone of surprise irked her more than she thought it would. "It's the kind of team we have when I can't spare anyone else," she snapped. "You want to complain, then go after them and back them up. You're done with your last mission, this is your new one. We've got six genin chasing the Uchiha boy down, we've got some Oto nin running around—one specializes in genjutsu, one manipulates chakra into different shapes—and possibly Orochimaru in the picture. We don't know for sure if Uchiha Sasuke left of his own will, but frankly the evidence points to the fact that he did."

Kakashi creased his forehead at the last piece of information, but nodded; the expression on his face showed quiet resolve-_Konoha's will of fire, like you said, old Sarutobi_, Tsunade thought. "Thank you, Tsunade-sama," he said, starting to turn. "I don't like to fail missions—"

"Er, Tsunade-sama?" One of the medic nin poked his head round the door. "We thought it'd be best to inform you—Rock Lee's missing."

"_What_?" Tsunade felt a headache coming on. "Why do I have to deal with insubordination _everywhere_?"

Kakashi showed a flash of his usual irrepressible humor as his one visible eye curved up ever so slightly. "… Sorry?"

Tsunade scowled. "Don't mess around," she snapped, then looked back at the medic nin. "When did you last see him?" she asked impatiently.

"Well, he went to visit Uzumaki Naruto and Haruno Sakura, and—"

She didn't try to stop herself this time as she grabbed the sake jug and threw it at the floor, watching it shatter with a rising frustration. _Damn damn damn it_!

"Tsunade-sama!" The medic nin stared at the pieces of the jug on the floor, eyes wide.

Tsunade swung around and glared at Kakashi, who seemed startled by her vehemence. _Oh, Rock Lee_ wouldn't—_but no, of course, he_ would.

"Excuse me," she said harshly. "It appears I've given you incorrect mission information by mistake, Kakashi._Seven_ genin chasing the Uchiha down now."

**oOo**

_—and he screams._

_The pain blossoms up along his spine, spikes driving relentlessly into his eyes, and the Mangekyou Sharingan blazes and whirls in his sight, a maelstrom for the blind. Maybe he planned this, he thinks, Naruto would be the kind of person who would drag Sasuke with him, even after death, but god—_

_The Kyuubi has the reputation for leveling mountains and upending seas; and above all, the Kyuubi will not be obliterated, will not become nothingness, will not be an absent bogeyman to terrify the insubordinate youth. For the Kyuubi is only the here and now, moving with the indiscriminate persecution of its own place and time-would it have mattered, if the others were not dead?—and its chakra digs deep into Sasuke's face, spinning into the veins and burning, burning, burning—_

_Then there is just the red and the black, the shadows creeping across his vision inexorably. The Sharingan, his Mangekyou Sharingan shrinks and reels from the pain, the relentless biting pain—_

_—"Your reflexes are awful," Naruto had said, and smiled that awful, stupid smile with the clear light of his eyes slipping away like dribbling water—_

This isn't happening, this isn't happening—

_(Sasuke has always been a genius of denial.)_

—and he screams.

The smoke of the curse seal billows around him like a thundercloud; the wood of the barrel goes to splinters in a blast blown out by pressure and webbed wings.

A muttered exclamation: "He's out early!" and then, urgent and wary: "Sasuke-sama!"

_I'm—here. And where, when_—a savaged, littered plain or a battered copse of trees, chakra violently red bleeding to purple bleeding to black—_where is the when but the when is_—

And his eyes open.

_—now_.

* * *

The chapter title is from:

_Before me floats an image, man or shade,  
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;  
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth  
May unwind the winding path;  
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath  
Breathless mouths may summon;  
I hail the superhuman;  
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death_.  
—W.B. Yeats, "Byzantium"

IT IS SO HARD TO WRITE LEE. D: I sincerely hope I didn't turn him into a caricature.

As far as my experience goes, people don't really acknowledge that Karin used to run a PRISON and probably had some really nasty, effective ways of dealing with prisoners. (Although I just realized there are different ways to interpret her saying, "I can make anyone scream…" Um.)

Tsunade might sound extreme on her views of Sasuke and just getting rid of him :P, but keep in mind she's also stressed and frustrated and in a bad temper. Also, her impression of Sasuke would start off being negative after the rooftop fight and so forth; after all, she's got a soft spot for Naruto. :) And haha, I had a lot of fun writing her POV; she allowed me to vent my own grumbling about the situation. XD

I love writing present tense, and for the next several chapters Sasuke's POV will be in present tense. It's just to highlight the sense of everything-at-the-moment warped time mentality Sasuke has, in contrast to everyone else's past tense.


	12. 11: mere anarchy

**11 – mere anarchy**

(_The awakening has been a long time in coming_.)

"Sasuke-sama!"

_The voice came from there_, he thinks, even as the identification—_Sakon, that's Sakon_—hits his brain a second later. _From Orochimaru_.

—remembers Orochimaru coiling up in the back of his mind, biding his time until Itachi had used Susanoo, and_then_—

"_Itachi_," he says, and marvels at the missing taste of blood in his mouth; reaches up and touches his eyelids briefly with a startled wonder. Not choking, not drowning, not collapsing with the world coming apart around him in a storm of the Kyuubi's chakra and his eyes shooting arrows of pain savagely through his skull, turning in bloody pinwheel patterns—_how did the Kyuubi break free_? he thinks frantically, and looks behind him as if expecting to see the nine-tailed bijuu, all brimstone and flame personified, as if expecting, knowing, that Naruto is_no longer there_—

Someone grips his left shoulder, and he jerks back at the sudden touch, grabbing the offending hand and twisting it so sharply that he can hear the _crack_ of bone.

"Shit! What the _hell_ was that for?" the person yells. Sasuke looks up and sees the hitai-ate, the multiple arms, the scowl—"You're… Kidoumaru," he says.

_He's the one who spins chakra into whatever he chooses_, part of his mind tells him.

_More importantly_, another part chimes in, _he's_ dead.

He does look very alive at the moment, although his right hand falls limply at his side. "You got to the second level, Sasuke-sama," he says; Sasuke sees the barely concealed flicker of burning resentment that flits across the Oto nin's face at the use of the honorific. None of them, he remembers, were the kind who liked to pay undeserved respect. Anyone else would probably be suffering Kidoumaru's wrath right now for the twist Sasuke dealt to his hand.

_Were? Or are_? For some reason, all he can think of is the curse seal, its familiar surge of power now receding back to his lower neck—_but it shouldn't feel so familiar_, he thinks. _I've only just got it_. The contradiction does not fully sink in. "Where's Juugo?" he asks. "Where's my chokuto?" _Maybe I'm asleep_, he wonders numbly. _Maybe I'm dead_.

"Sasuke-sama, there's no one here called Juugo," Sakon replies, exchanging a frown with Tayuya. "Your weapon—"

"I knew that!" he snaps, snatching his chokuto the moment Jiroubou pulls it out. "They're fighting somewhere else!"

Strange, because the Sound Four are all dead by now. He glances down at the blade, which reflects cloudless blue sky—_it's clean, there's no blood. How_—

The thoughts slide into place. _I'm shorter_—and, _the Sound Four are deadalivedead_—_where is Suige—who is Suigetsu? Hebi_? "This isn't a dream," he says, and flushes at the cracking of his voice. Too high, too panicky and shrill—this hasn't happened for ages, he's grown past this stage of adolescent awkwardness, what the _hell_ is going on?

The chokuto feels heavy and unfamiliar even though it shouldn't be. He raises it defensively and activates his Sharingan—he doesn't expect the sudden stab of pain at his temples, and twitches.

"He's not supposed to be like this, is he?" mutters Tayuya. "Fuck the curse seal, he's better off unconscious"—and in the next second Sasuke can see the twist of her shoulders as she reaches for her flute—

—_of course, this must be genjutsu_!

He doesn't stop to think, but instinctively slashes his blade in her direction—_Madara, you bastard_, he rages in his mind, _goddamn him and his blasted Mangekyou Sharingan and his genjutsu_—threads of chakra manipulators twisting around and creating other illusionary worlds—this is the second time Sasuke's Sharingan has failed him, unable to find its way out among the many-layered traps of Madara's making, because he _cannot_ see past this obvious fake—and the first time he hadn't known—

—his thoughts slam up against a seething wall of self-loathing, of hate hate _hate_—_that time with Madara's genjutsu_—and there is utter blankness, the presence of some horrific idea obscured by a wispy, deceptive emptiness, but he can feel the shock bubbling underneath and shies away—

"He's gone mad!" Tayuya was screaming. "You little runt, don't even think about scorching me"—she was raising her flute to her lips now—"and how the hell did he learn lightning attacks like—"

The lightning hums viciously along the tips of his fingers, crackling around his chokuto, and he gives in. _Strike_, he whispers in his mind. _Give them back tenfold what they gave us_.

—And there! Kidoumaru in front of him, sticky chakra threads flung at him like a spider snaring its prey, but he ducks and turns and falls back, throwing out his arm in a wide sweep that sends sparks jumping at the Sound Four. _Like when I was on the hospital roof_, the abrupt realization hits him, _the same as fighting Naruto. But I only used Chidori that time—no, I used something else, Orochimaru taught me that_—

("You've mainly concentrated on gathering chakra in your hands for Chidori," he says, and his voice is so impersonal, so unusually disinterested, that Sasuke can almost ignore the way Orochimaru holds on to his wrist, his thumb pressing hard into the vein, as if to observe how one experimental specimen—Uchiha Sasuke, fourteen, self-acknowledged master of scowls and revenge—would react to the pressure. "So," and he traces the vein up his arm, "now you need to imagine the blood flowing throughout your body and channel through your arteries and veins to control electric charge."

"I see," he says, staring straight ahead at the far wall. A spider meanders up, then skitters sideways, and if he can learn somehow to strike that spider from this distance—)

The lightning rushes forward in a chattering of flashes and sparks—he is staring at the wall, he is staring at the wide open clearing before him, with the spider finally dropping dead, Kidoumaru stumbling and twitching involuntarily. But he's able to stand, and _does that mean_—Chidori Nagashi is weaker, his body aching from the discharge of electricity, and it shouldn't happen like this after so many years of use, shouldn't feel like his first time trying the jutsu out—and his hands sting. He isn't sure if it comes from the lightning or the heavy weight of the chokuto, digging into his not-so-roughened palms.

There is Sakon, dodging to the right and then barreling toward him with arms reaching out, ready to meld himself to Sasuke like wet sand through the merging of his kekkai genkai—he flickers out of existence and then flashes back into view, but—_a genjutsu within a genjutsu_, Sasuke thinks, and turns away from the fake Sakon, hearing the wavering thin wail of Tayuya's flute.

_He must be around somewhere_—he wills his eyes to look past the illusions of a Sharingan's power, the delusions of one man's goals, but a whiplash of red flashes in his vision, searing like a glowing red brand over the whites of his eyes—red for the Sharingan, red for the Kyuubi, red for blood, all shades churning together in a sickening miasma of unbearable silence, a heartbeat's worth of nothingness but the colors of war—he blinks, and the world is staring in his face again, but—

—but Jiroubou's punch is coming from the left, his Sharingan tells him—his body doesn't move fast enough and the force of a harsh fist to his side sends him reeling. _My body_, he thinks dazedly, _my muscle memory isn't there. Even though I should've been able to get out of the way_—

For some reason, he is too _slow_. He keeps miscalculating the distance. And _this_ is absolutely intolerable.

"Make sure he's alive!" Sakon's voice filters through the snickering licks of lightning that dance savagely around Sasuke. "Orochimaru-sama still wants his body intact!"

He hears Tayuya swear, and snap: "Let's just get rid of the damn twit! He's lost his mind!"—

"It doesn't matter if he's lost his mind, Orochimaru-sama will destroy his mind anyway!" Jiroubou is being completely truthful.

He rolls to the side, and the next thrust of his sword catches Jiroubou through the shoulder, who hisses and grips the blade with bare hands—_wait, what is he_—

—then he feels himself smashing into the tree, carried along by the momentum of Jiroubou's swing, and the air in his lungs deserts him momentarily as he lets go of his chokuto. He looks up blindly and sees Jiroubou raising a bleeding fist above his head—

—_to knock you out_, something mutters madly, _just like you knocked out Sakura_—

_But I didn't_!—hazy words of protest shouting in his mind. _That's ridiculous—but you said thank you_, the voice replied, _you remember that_—

Sasuke brings his hands up in an attempt at Katon to block Jiroubou—_you see it now, don't you_, the whispers continue, _you can't deny the facts of your own life_—and his _eyes_—

—his eyes are on fire, liquid heat flowing into the hollows of his sockets and bubbling like magma, the retinas aflame and whitening his vision until all he can see is the tiny pinprick of the sun beyond his handseal and the enemy's falling strike—

The world darkens in a soundless wave of blackened fire, unfettered and blazing free into the heart of light, the silence.

**oOo**

The forest was too quiet. Shikamaru, who normally would have relished the lack of troublesome noise, felt the muted abnormality nagging at him. It was the absence of what _should_ be there which bothered him—rather like the kind of feeling he would get if Chouji ever refused another bag of chips, or if Ino passed up shopping in favor of cloud-watching.

_Yes_, he thought, a frown on his face. _The forest is too quiet_.

_Well, at least it means that we're almost certainly on the right track. The ninja sent by Orochimaru didn't fuss much about scaring off wildlife_. They'd already passed some Konoha nin a while ago—Neji had seen three of them at a distance, battered but in stable condition. The Hokage's helper Shizune had been there as well, but she was in no position to help them, busy as she was with taking care of her teammates, so he'd directed them to keep going. Besides, he didn't need them standing around and wondering about how the Oto nin had taken down three jounin.

_So, odds of this mission actually being a success are about_—Shikamaru cut off that line of thinking. There was no point to calculating the probability; he just had to do the best he could, and—

Akamaru let out a series of wild yips.

"You smell something too?" Kiba muttered. Shikamaru saw Kiba tilt his head up and sniff.

"What is it now?" he asked sharply.

Kiba frowned and cocked his head to the right. "Fire," he said slowly, tapping his nose and nodding to himself. "But it smells—_wrong_. Fire's got its own particular kind of smell besides the smoke that comes with it—but I don't smell smoke. Not smoke from something burning. It's not like a normal fire. There's something that's just dirty about it."

"I can't see that far," Neji said from behind him, sounding frustrated. "Besides, your chakra systems are blocking me from getting a clearer view of the front."

"We'll have to get closer," Shikamaru replied.

"I think I smell blood too," added Kiba. As he landed on the next tree branch, he crouched down low and pushed off with even greater force than before.

"If there's blood," Chouji said musingly, "that means a fight. You think the Oto nin are fighting with Sasuke?"

Shikamaru pressed his lips together until they were visible only as a line. "It's a possibility," he finally admitted. "But we can't take him as an ally for granted. It could be he's under some compulsion, or genjutsu that warps his view. For all we know, it could just be that they're fighting another unknown enemy. Neji!"

Neji blinked, the veins around his eyes still bulging in the characteristic sign of the Byakugan. "Yes?"

"Move out a little to the side to see if you can make anything out soon," Shikamaru ordered. "Chouji, make sure to cover him while you can."

"Right!" Chouji shifted back as Neji moved up a little.

"And up the pace, Kiba."

"I am!"

"Then go _faster_—"

"Someone's coming up behind us," Neji said abruptly. "Wait. It's—" There was a long pause. "I think it's Naruto," he added cautiously. "I also see Lee and Sakura."

"What do you mean?" Chouji didn't bother to mute his astonishment. "They're supposed to be in the hospital!"

_Oh dear god_, Shikamaru thought wearily.

**oOo**

His fingers are smeared with blood, which trickles down and gathers in the creases of his palm. Sasuke reaches up and touches the corners of his eyes again, tracing out the wet stickiness along the line of his cheek._Amaterasu_, he thinks shakily.

The undying fire surrounds him, pressing close to him but never touching, holding itself back and flitting away elusively. He can see the air rippling with the heat, but this—_when did this happen? I didn't—kill_—and his thoughts trail off into nothing. _Doesn't matter. Don't think about it_.

He can hear the Sound Four shouting to each other past Amaterasu's flame, but the voices are indistinct to him, filtering through the fire's hissing and the unnatural stillness of his mind. Back and back to the same things—Itachi, the Kyuubi, Madara—Naruto, and Sakura, and the Sharingan. The visions cycle into his thoughts inexorably—no words, only images.

Sasuke gets to his feet haltingly. _So all this, the words that only I heard and the déjà vu and the lightning_ (_it's got a proper name, you know_, he's telling himself dryly), _this is coming from_—

More garbled yelling, and he turns and runs. He cannot deal with the Oto nin now—doesn't want to, wouldn't be able to, and _screw Orochimaru six ways to hell_, there is no way he's going to him now. Amaterasu roars up behind him, barring the Sound Four from following him right away.

_I already made the choice last time_, he decides, so _it's redundant to do it again—but last time_? He doubles back on his train of thought. _I remember this_, Sasuke realizes, _but I shouldn't, this hasn't happened_!

_Yet_. The wind whips against his face with sickening slaps of fresh air—he is running, his feet automatically taking him to nowhere, to somewhere, to Sound to Konoha to Itachi to Akatsuki—always running, chasing after the new object of his revenge. Running after Sakura and Naruto, who are running after Akatsuki themselves—the jinchuuriki, the bijuu. _And Madara spoke of demons_—

_This isn't_ right. Despair and shock intertwined with another, his brain synapses working overtime. _How did this happen? I'm young again—I'm remembering things that never took place—and no, this is not genjutsu. This is not genjutsu_. The thought was strangely comforting. _Even Madara can't come up with crazy stuff like this_.

_Two different ways I fought Naruto, two different ways Kakashi lectured me, and two different ways I left Konoha—Sakura knocked out, Sakura not there, and I was outside but I was inside and they fought me but they used genjutsu and persuaded me first anyway_—there are too many contradictions, jumbling together and fighting each other for dominance in his mind, taxing the limits of his skull.

_I'm Sasuke_, he repeats to himself. _Uchiha Sasuke. Just Sasuke. My mother's name was Mikoto and she always made tomato dishes for me, my father was Fugaku and he always came to dinner exactly five minutes after six when he could, and my brother_—he falters in the recitation, but forges ahead—_my brother is Itachi. Was Itachi_. But the customary rage has faded at the mention of his name, and in his mind he sees his brother's eyes alive with a desperate belief that everything he's done is right, twisted perversely in the hope that the village would allow Sasuke his life—_The people we love_, Itachi had said, _to kill them and watch them die, that is our fate—but I never wanted to kill you_, and he does not know whether it was Itachi or himself who said it—

"Don't think like that!" he's shouting to himself, and how he must sound mad, speaking to himself like another person, but there _are_ two and he doesn't know why—_Itachi? I'll kill him and take revenge for the clan and—and_—

The fury snuffs itself out. Things rewind, the earth passes beneath his feet as transitory as any other element of life and death—if he could lose himself in the running, he would never have to think about the intricacies of how and why and what, but _oh god_—

(This is the last thing he remembers: that the Kyuubi's chakra corrodes whatever it touches, and he'd activated Susanoo, moving into otherworldly dimensions beyond the boxed space, to protect himself—he is a genius at surviving, this Uchiha Sasuke, turning in upon himself as ouroboros, the snake which eats itself up in an unending pattern—

—but the Kyuubi's chakra does strange things to jutsu, and he's eaten too much of himself to escape unscathed without giving up bits and pieces of his life—)

The distant roar of water sounds in his ears as he jumps through the trees; now the forest is clearing away and he sees rock, a statue—

Long straight hair with the Senju symbol emblazoned across the carved cliffs, and _there_—spiky hair so like Sasuke's own, the heavy armor typical of the old warring days—

No need to look into the statue's eyes. He knows this place intimately like the back of his hands—_I've never been here before_, but he recognizes it.

Down on the surface of the water—that was when Naruto unleashed the Kyuubi on him—and his left hand aches suddenly. (It is hard to push through flesh and blood and bone, even with Chidori dancing about like the executioner.)

He has unconsciously traced already-traveled paths, this cliff and these waters—and that fight.

_The Valley of the End_, Sasuke echoes blankly to himself, and almost misses the noises of the Sound Four's pursuit as the Oto nin come out of the trees.

* * *

The chapter title is from W.B. Yeats's "The Second Coming." The "into the heart of light, the silence" phrase is ganked from T.S. Eliot:

_-Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,  
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not  
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither  
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,  
Looking into the heart of light, the silence_.  
—T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land" (I. The Burial of the Dead)

I hope this chapter wasn't too… strange. Sasuke is completely out of it, and you can see that some things are coming to light, such as how he time-traveled in the first place; and also, Sasuke really doesn't like himself. Ahaha.


	13. 12: stained and made bloody

**12 – stained and made bloody**

_I don't think I ever want another team again. This one is already too much to handle_.

Ahead of him, Pakkun dropped off the tree branch onto the ground. Kakashi followed him and cleared the next hop, coming into a small clearing. "Yo," he said, purposefully casual. "Run into the Oto nin?"

Shizune was scowling when she finally looked up at him, the visible healing chakra dissipating around her hands. "I'd think you have better things to do than taking side trips," she commented. "I felt a group of genin going past just a while ago—you go reinforce them. Iwashi, sit _down_. You shouldn't have been so rash as to completely disregard all common sense. I don't believe I ordered you to just up and try to engage them."

Iwashi was the least injured of the other three, and looked the most reproached. "As Oto nin they should've been stopped," he muttered. "Plus, Genma and Raidou—"

"Have a bit more faith in the village's security than to think that the Oto nin are going to go without being pursued," Kakashi interrupted. _Even though the village's security hadn't caught them initially_… "The Hokage already ordered me to follow the genin as backup, since I finished my last mission and returned after the genin were already sent out. I don't suppose you can give me any specifics on the Oto nin?" He hoped that he had made the right decision to veer off to the side, letting the Oto nin and Konoha genin move farther away from him, letting his team run farther and farther, away and out—saw in his mind the spiky blond hair and the quiet smile, the Sharingan eye looking up at him _under the rock under all that rock_—

Kakashi drew in his breath sharply; he could do no more than trust that Shikamaru and his team could handle it by themselves for a moment longer.

Raidou opened his eyes and finally spoke. "They activate some kind of seal on their bodies which drastically increases their stamina and strength. One of them has two heads and has some phasing ability, one of them's like the Akimichi, one has multiple arms and the other specializes in genjutsu—but by tackling us four on two at first, they mostly used taijutsu to surprise us."

_Avoid prolonged physical contact, stay on the lookout for genjutsu, don't be intimidated by size… multiple arms_? Kakashi frowned. _Must be the one who attacked Naruto and manipulated chakra threads. And the genjutsu—the one who Sakura faced. Can use genjutsu at a distance too, by seals_.

"Seals on their bodies, huh?" Pakkun grunted, scratching the skin behind his ear as he sat. "Doesn't smell right to me," he added as he reached up with a front paw to rub his nose. "It smells draining."

"They've gone beyond the shinobi arts," Genma said; he lay against the tree, barely moving. "Tsunade-sama shouldn't have just sent genin after them…"

"She trusts them to do their task," Kakashi said. "Shizune, you'll take them back to Konoha?"

Shizune slowly stood, looking down at Genma. "Iwashi," she finally said, "take Genma and Raidou to the hospital once you get to Konoha"—then glanced at Kakashi. "You don't suppose the Oto nin will get backup?"

"Backup?" Kakashi repeated. "I don't know Orochimaru's mind, but—" he jerked his head at the trees. "Another one's always good, if you're willing."

"I've stabilized those two as best as I could," she said. "But if we let the Oto nin get away like this, the political implications…" she shrugged. "Not good for Konoha's standing."

Kakashi sensed there was something more, dark anger flickering behind Shizune's eyes. _Don't really need to ask, though, and as for time_—he nodded to Pakkun. "Let's go, I'll update you on what Tsunade told me."

_To make up for all those other times when I was too slow, sensei—let me be fast enough, just this once_.

**oOo**

"What the fuck kind of shinobi _is_ the kid?" Tayuya said suspiciously, twirling her flute between her fingers. Jiroubou had called them to a halt as soon as they'd reached the valley, where their target stood on the water, twitching with tension and looking in their direction (_yeah, so we're too pissed to even be sneaky, damn Uchiha, so be as nervous as you can be—watch us, fear us_).

Sakon only looked disgusted. "He probably overreacted to the Seishingan and the curse seal, who knows? Maybe he's calmed down now."

"_Better_ have, Konoha'll be onto us soon," Tayuya spat, glancing at Jiroubou—he had narrowly avoided most of the massive black flames which had suddenly erupted out of nowhere when he was just about to knock the boy out. His right side was burnt in patches, his left shoulder was dripping blood, and he had forsaken his usual placidity in favor of silent fuming.

Sitting to her side, Kidoumaru set down the bow and arrow he had just formed from chakra. He didn't look as though he'd fully recovered from Uchiha's lightning attack yet, even as he began to piece threads of chakra together. "I," he said softly, "am going to _kill_ Kabuto when we get back. A spy who can't even do his job properly and give us the correct information—between the invasion and now, there's no fucking way he could have learned all this, especially since most of the time he was laid out in the hospital. But Kabuto didn't tell us about the black fire, or how he channels the lightning out through his body—"

"—or how batshit crazy he's acting," Jiroubou muttered. "Maybe level two caused irreparable damage to his brain. You done?"

Kidoumaru held up the lattice of chakra threads which he had swiftly mapped out, and examined it against the light. "Finished," he said.

A smirk spread over Sakon's face. "Time for me to go, then."

**oOo**

He can sense the Oto nin staked out along the shore, so Sasuke walks backward on the water, the spray of the waterfall flung against his back. _They should not have made it this far_, he thinks, for he had gone into Orochimaru's lair all alone, walking into the enemy's den—no one flanked him, back then, just a path of destruction and death scattered in his footprints, _and they should not have made it here, this place—I fought Naruto,_ he remembers now, envisions the thickening marks on Naruto's face and the fox's crazed grinning face spinning out of the red chakra—

—when Madara's control over the other gathered bijuu had dissipated, and Kyuubi had _exploded_—

The Sound Four hovers at the edges of Sasuke's awareness, but in front of him he sees his one track splitting now. One: the Valley of the End, Orochimaru, Madara, and Kyuubi surrounding him with all the promise of hellfire and oblivion. And two: the Valley of the End, again.

_Last time_, Sasuke tells himself. _Last time that happened, and this time… This time there is something new._

_Or maybe_, he thinks wildly, _this is all a dream, a genjutsu_—not even Madara's, but one of Kyuubi's making, because Kyuubi has experienced enough at Madara's hands for it to enjoy screwing with a Uchiha's mind. Except the Kyuubi wouldn't bother with such an intricate illusion and would just go for his jugular—

_Or maybe_—and perhaps this is the wildest thought of all, backtracking on life and starting again—_this _is_ real_—

(_Susanoo and Kyuubi together, in that one moment before everything imploded_. My name is Uchiha Sasuke, _he repeated to himself_, and I am—seventeen—thirteen—)

—and does not have time to think _how_ or _why_ as he sees one of the Sound Four racing across the water; has barely enough time to duck to the right and draw his chokuto—

Draws, instead, at empty air—not here, he realizes, he'd left it behind him when—he skids across the water to a stop and looks back.

"Sasuke-sama!" Sakon yells at him. "Are you going to learn from Orochimaru-sama?" _Or not_? his words ask silently. _If you dare say so_.

"Orochimaru?" he echoes back.

(His face forms out of the landscape, grinning grotesquely in the fashion of a skeleton, moving lifelessly, blankly, as do the skeletons which grope about blindly and reach into his mind's depths when he dreams, all snapped bone and slashed tendons and slit throats, drowning the Uchiha district in blood with the moon shining down too innocently. Around them the ground-which-is-not rises up and down, cracked and dry—

—is parched ground himself, sliding up and around in bumpy knots, but he channels chakra to his eyes and lets red overtake his pupils; _I will not die_, the mantra runs in his head, _I will not die until I kill Itachi_—)

—_until I kill_—

"Learn?" he asks. "No. Not now. Not from him." A flash of pain shoots through his eyes, and the corners of his mouth turn up mirthlessly. (_"Orochimaru… you are weaker than me."_

"… _Big words, from the leftover Uchiha."_

_Not now, not ever. Thrown away on the floor, discarded like trash, the leftover left to live, never never never_—Should've died like all the rest, _the voice whispers inside him, reaching out to the void_.)

"That's not possible, Sasuke-sama," Sakon replies, his voice sharp and blunt—of course, as if they had meant to let him leave and thus risk bringing Orochimaru's punishment upon themselves. "I think it's best you come with us, so you can control the curse seal for your own use."

"For my own use?" Sasuke laughs tersely. "I don't need to use it." He leans back warily into a crouch, tilting his head up—sees the blue of the sky clearly defined, and then the outline of nearby trees blurring suddenly; blinks, deactivating the Sharingan suddenly, a frigid blast of fear swamping him, because it was his _vision_ that had worsened—

—as though he is standing in two places at once, watching Sakon, watching himself watch Sakon and Sakon watch him; watches most of all, disinterestedly, the darkness encroaching, a vast gorge separating himself from the other himself as he stares down into the abyss—

… _blinks, and Naruto turns his head back to look at him, baring his teeth in a savagely triumphant grin. "You bastard, stay alive," he orders. "You're always the survivor, so you'd _better_ stay alive, or else I'll kill you."_

_Strange how easily Sasuke slips back to the old days—_ah_, he thinks, _the dead last once again reveals his utter lack of logic_. But his sight hasn't cleared and he stares back unseeingly—the blond hair comes into focus, then the whisker marks. "Why the_ fuck _are you here?"_

"_Heh." Naruto squints his eyes. Sasuke is eerily reminded of Kakashi. (Dead two months now, but Naruto, just like Kakashi, keeps parts of his precious people alive.) "It was all because of you. Bastard."_

—_and then he looks properly at Naruto's face for the first time, and sees the blood, and looks down at himself, and sees—_

_No_, he thinks. _Not now. Not_ him.

… blinks, and Sakon is saying, "Yes, you do," his face reflecting boredom, and strangely, suspiciously, a hint of anticipation. Sasuke stares back—senses again the vacant space in his mind which has been cleaned out too cleanly, that same frigid feeling creeping up his body as biting as the lake breeze. "Orochimaru-sama will make sure you aren't as pitiful as you are now! You don't even understand what I'm saying, do you?" He bares his teeth in a grin lacking all kindness. "Pathetic—"

Sasuke looks skyward and sees the arrow shooting up, the threads streaming down in a knotted pattern—his mind processes the situation, supplies him helpfully with _trap_, but he takes one step to the left—too slow, his body is too damn _slow_, and he curses out loud as the ends shoot down around him and Sakon plunges a hand into the water. The net draws up the chakra flash which pulses through the surrounding water, locking it into a hardened shape.

_I won't be caught that easily_. "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu!" He raises his hands to his mouth and lets the fireball come to life, racing out furiously against the net, but the flames pass through the squares harmlessly. (_Kidoumaru's work_, he recognizes, just like in his hospital room.)

Sakon is smirking; _but he won't be for long_, Sasuke thinks furiously. He cannot stand being hemmed in like this, imprisoned—

—by the Uchiha, and fate—himself, walking through the forest into the dark, driving forward as tunnel vision narrows away all sight of the world till the only thing he sees is—

"_Brother_," he breathes out.

_His back faces Sasuke, but Itachi turns his head and says, "To kill them and watch them die, that is our fate—"_And you followed yours as I did mine_, his eyes speak without words, until black turns red and the Mangekyou blades come to undo his world all over once more_—

He grips his right wrist with his other hand and brings it down to waist level. "_Chidori_," he grits out tightly, and looks up through the chittering of the lightning. He's used Chidori Nagashi already, not Chidori (Kakashi's jutsu, and he'll let his teacher keep his own), but he has punched holes in so many lives that he can certainly punch through a goddamn chakra net.

The Sound Four does not know this. But then again—he activates the Sharingan again, ignoring the pinched feeling along the cornea, the blood drying along the lower eyelid (from his eyes, but now he does not try to think _how_ or_why_)—they do not know him at all.

("_Your reflexes are _awful_!" Something deep inside him shifts, breaking into a thousand shards, and he cannot see his own reflection in the jagged pieces which mock him with reality._

_He hears someone screaming, and then he realizes it's coming from inside him_.)

—and he charges forward.

**oOo**

"What are _you_ guys doing here?"

Kiba seemed to be having a mild aneurysm; even Akamaru looked affronted on his partner's behalf. Sakura sniffed, tossed her head, and said, "Sasuke-kun's our teammate, of course we're going to be here."

"Hmph," Shikamaru said. He looked partly relieved, partly disgruntled. "Surprising that Tsunade-sama let you out of the hospital to follow us."

Naruto laughed even louder than usual. "Ahahahaha, baa-chan's cool like that!"

Shikamaru narrowed his eyes—_he must realize that's not true_, Sakura noticed, _Naruto's way too obvious when he pretends_—but didn't say anything.

"So," Naruto continued, far too casual to be genuinely so, "have we got anything new on the Oto—"

Neji jerked his head suddenly forward, the veins around his eyes bulging out. "About fifty meters ahead," he said. "Looks like there was a fight—"

"Must've been Sasuke!" Naruto turned to Sakura, gesturing wildly. _Let's pull on ahead_, his eyes pleaded with her.

Sakura had to look away from him. "Anyone still there?" she addressed Neji. _We need to know what the area's like first_, she thought. _Can't walk into traps like that_.

_Naruto_… she wanted to cry, or smile, or both. She could imagine him going after Sasuke forever and ever, his vision narrowed down to nothing else. She wanted to thank him, for always being himself; wanted to hit him, for that same reason. _We'll go after Sasuke-kun together—we can reach him in the darkness, but we can't just save him. The only person who can save him is himself, if Sasuke-kun chooses to come out_…

The realization burned less than it might have—once she would have dreamed of Sasuke saving her, or her saving Sasuke, in some brilliant flashy battle, life and death on the line, and everlasting love proclaimed solemnly afterward. But battles within the heart—

She knew, silently, that she could only do her best to understand.

"It's deserted, no noticeable traps that I can see." Neji frowned. "Evidence of—burning though…" he trailed off to look at Kiba.

"That must be from the wacky fire Kiba smelled earlier," Chouji commented. Akamaru barked in agreement.

Lee pulled forward to match Shikamaru's pace. "Sasuke-san's will of fire is strong," he said as if stating a fact. "Don't worry, Sakura-san, Naruto-kun! Sasuke-san is not a stupid ninja!"

"Of course not!" Naruto scoffed. "He's just a bastard, that's all. Should've asked me to beat down the Oto nin for him!"

Sakura smiled weakly, but said nothing. She remembered Sasuke looking at her but not seeing her in the hospital; remembered walking out onto the roof to see the scorched damage, the lights flickering, and Sasuke's face then—

_He wasn't seeing us then. He was seeing something else entirely_.

Distantly she heard Shikamaru directing Chouji, Kiba, and Lee off to the side. "And you said the clearing's completely empty, Neji?"

"Yes," Neji replied, as they all slowed down at Shikamaru's signal. "And I don't see anything suspicious. It seems whoever fought here left in a hurry."

Shikamaru frowned, but nodded to Naruto. Naruto pumped a fist into the air and surged forward; Sakura followed behind closely, channeling more chakra to her feet. After this was finished she was going to go train, and improve her stamina. Or _something_.

They came into the clearing. Sakura took it all in—blood splattered on the dirt, a scorched patch of tree trunks, a blade forgotten on the ground. Her heart beat fast in her chest. It was definitely Sasuke-kun—who knew where he had figured out how to release lightning like that, but those marks—

There was huge splintered pieces of wood nearby. "Looks like a barrel," Shikamaru said as he dropped down; one by one, the other members of the team came into the clearing, cautious and wary.

"He broke free then," Naruto said slowly, a smile spreading across his face. "See! I knew baa-chan couldn't be right! There's no way Sasuke would just leave the village like that, they made him go!"

"Yeah." Sakura tracked the signs of struggle to the far side, where they led into the forest. Where had her faith gone? She kept coming back to that one instant: herself peeling apples, sitting peacefully next to Sasuke-kun's bed, and then he'd just _moved_—

—and when she looked into his eyes she had seen something completely alien.

_But he was still Sasuke-kun_, she told herself; she could not forget the rage and despair, but she could set it aside. "He went this way," she said, motioning to the disturbed foliage which created a path for them to follow, and felt her heart soaring up oddly with a flutter of hope.

Sasuke-kun had not been completely swallowed up. And as for her—_I won't have to see their backs forever_, she told herself grimly. _One day… I'll be in the front_.

She glanced at Naruto—saw him look back, blue eyes blazing—and gave him a broad smile. "Let's go," she said. "He can't possibly have got that far away yet."

* * *

Chapter title from:

_Leaves pallid and sombre and ruddy,  
Dead fruits of the fugitive years;  
Some stained as with wine and made bloody,  
And some as with tears_.  
—Algernon Swinburne, "Dedication, 1865"

("Orochimaru… you are weaker than me."  
"… Big words, from the leftover Uchiha.")  
-**Ch. 344** ("The Snake")

In light of all the canon that has happened since my last update (last September ahahahaha so much _fail_ on my part), I should probably state explicitly that future!Sasuke's storyline follows canon as far as the end of Ch. 392 ("Susanoo"). I have taken some of future!Sasuke's memories from dialogue after that chapter, but consider those lines spoken under different circumstances.


	14. 13: and the wrath of hearts that burn

**13 – and the wrath of hearts that burn**

The Chidori crackles around his hand and dissipates, shuddering along the chakra threads as the ends cringe and curl away. His eyes are blurred by blood, but he does not try to clear his sight. The blurriness does not weaken his ability to attack, and attacking is most important. _Attacking is important too_, his father is saying to the elders, and he peeks curiously around the door. _We defend and attack to protect, always_.

_Attacking is important_, he repeats to himself, stumbling over the syllables. Later he tells his brother this, and then: _So, could you teach me about throwing shuriken_? Looks up at his brother, hoping; and Uchiha Itachi raises his eyes, blanker than washed slate, his gaze passing over him, and pokes him in the forehead.

_Sorry, Sasuke. Another time_.

_Did you pity me even then? Did you think me weak_?

(—_those whom we love_, Itachi breathes out hollowly—)

"Don't call me pathetic," he says lowly.

"I'm not lying to you, Sasuke-sama." Sakon raises his hands placatingly. "You agreed to come with us, after all. We all want the same thing, don't we?—you'll become powerful more quickly than you ever could in a backwater place like Konoha." He spits the name out like a curse.

A curse, yes, that dogs his every step and refuses to just go away, go far away—_I'm almost done_, he thinks, and the weariness creeps over him, _I could have been done_, but now his past future stretches out before him again—another departure, and another goal, and vengeance made close to the heart. There is no rest for him.

He feels like he could hate fate for turning him back to the beginning, after all the time he has spent moving away from it. He cannot move forward, he retreads the same path he did and as the Uchiha did time and time again, and what lies before him is only—

He crouches low, then pushes off against the water in Jiroubou's direction. "Just leave!" he growls, hurtling toward the largest of the Sound Four—and sees the shimmer out of the corner of his eye, runs into—

His skin maps the structure out for him first, the pattern appearing in whiplash against his bare arms. Then, the activated Sharingan—he'd seen the net burning away under his Chidori, but not the second one which fell from above. The last notes of Tayuya's flute linger around him.

"_This_ is supposed to be Orochimaru-sama's new container?" she says, flicking a stray bang out of her face. "He's so unaware and oblivious—"

Sasuke snarls wordlessly—_not true, not true, she doesn't know me—that's a total lie_—

—_but you're a bad liar_—

The electricity sizzles out of his body, fueled by sheer willpower, but… he can feel his chakra draining away slowly, his power slipping away from him—_how to get out? how do I get out? out out out_—

(Sasuke hates being caged by what he can see.)

The Sound Four have surrounded him now, but Kidoumaru's smirk is what fills his vision. "My net's weakness to electricity is easily fixed," he tells Sasuke pointedly. "You haven't really thought that we could be stronger than you, have you?"

In the next moment Sasuke is blinded by the force of the punch to his temple. His Sharingan spins and deactivates to a dull darkness.

"Did you think you were _humoring_ us by coming along?" Kidoumaru hisses. "We thought you were smart enough to recognize that you would know the honor given you, something you don't deserve—but you actually thought you had a _choice_? Dumbass."

"Kidoumaru," Jiroubou warns, "don't rough him up too much. Orochimaru-sama wants him in decent shape."

"He's decent enough," Sakon retorts. "If we're decent, he's decent. I know you want to let him rot too, Jiroubou, I can see it in your face. He burned you, he fried Kidoumaru—we give back what we get."

"Stop yapping." Tayuya slaps Sakon's shoulder and gazes down at Sasuke. "You're getting tired, aren't you?" she comments.

_I'm always tired_, Sasuke wants to say. He can sense his chakra flickering now; stops his Chidori Nagashi. _It wasn't so bad_, he thinks. _I could go and kill Orochimaru later. I could go with them. I'll have to go either way—they can take me on, and even if I do win with this chakra depletion, where would I go afterward_?—easier, really, if he doesn't choose.

Sakon grabs him by the left arm and tugs him up. "Ukon and I will take care of things," he says gleefully. "We can control him from running."

"Ukon?" Sasuke asks warily and resists the urge to step back. Kabuto had mentioned the name before; but in general Oto nin did not bother to speak of the dead.

But they did speak of kekkei genkai, and yes, he remembers (thinking, recalling, a moment ago) that Sakon had one, the ability to mer—

Sakon's hand sinks into his wrist.

Sasuke reacts instinctively—he flings his arm to the side but his hand is still _not there_—_it's inside me_, Sasuke thinks wildly, _it's inside me, to control me_—

"Get the fuck out of me!" he screams.

"Sasuke-sama," Sakon says, his four arms restraining him—_four_ arms? Sasuke stares—"better ninja than you have suffered this too, so don't think it's too special."

"Really, don't bother," says the other head that is sticking out of Sakon's back.

_Don't panic_, he tells himself, _don't panic, Orochimaru pulled this on you and you beat him_—but that was when he made the preemptive attack, he knows, when he was older and better trained and ready to fight. Now he is young and chakra-drained and tired and sick of all the fighting, so many years of fighting and staying on guard against Orochimaru and Itachi and Madara and Danzou's ROOT—

"Look," Madara tells him lazily, "you see Konoha sending its hunter nin after you; they're closing in on you. Sasuke, you need to learn the difference between friend and enemy—"

"I have no friends," he interrupts, and raises his chokuto to point at Madara. "I choose my enemies."

_Enemy_, he thinks. The Oto nin see him shaking, speechless. Enemy.

This is why he went with them, he remembers. He needs power, strength, ability—

The seal at the base of his neck spasms to life with white-hot pain. Pain, and newly released _chakra_.

"Fuck me to hell and back," Kidoumaru shrieks, before Sasuke lashes out.

Sakon starts screaming. Sasuke can't hear himself screaming, but he must be, isn't he? Kabuto says that if someone attacked Sakon or Ukon when merging, they would attack themselves—and he presses his right palm against the junction of his wrist and Sakon's arm, pushing electricity in, letting the shock run through the enemy's body, and Sakon starts pulling free of him—

—_snap_! Jiroubou releases his arm. Sasuke doesn't realize at first that his hand has been crushed, until the mashed nerves start shrieking and he gasps and clenches his elbow tight, as if such a useless motion could actually stop the signals. _If Karin were here_—

Then he feels the tug at his senses as he stumbles away, people approaching through the trees—

—if Karin were here, she would have sensed them earlier.

_Not now_, he thinks, _I can't deal with them now, not _them—the seal is alive now, dancing across his face uncontrollably, and Tayuya comes up from behind and twists his arms, pushing him down, and under the water he goes—he forces his head back up, coughing and trying not to scream from the pressure on his arms, near his broken hand. "Looks like Konoha's sent company," Tayuya speaks into his ear.

"Guests!" Kidoumaru smirks as he slings a row of arrows toward the shoreside. _I need to move_, Sasuke thinks, _let me_ move! _They're mine_, the words stick in his throat with a wordless scream, _I am the one who has the right to deal with them_—

But he falls behind, he is not strong enough, good enough—is never enough of anything, the bitter mantra which rewinds over and over as often as he breathes—so he lets his lips soundlessly shape the jutsu name instead.

_You helped bring me here_, he thinks. _Now do what you should_.

_Susanoo_.

**oOo**

"Get close together!" Sakura heard Neji shout suddenly as they cleared the trees—she blinked across the watery expanse and the towering cliffs, then blinked at the projectiles coming their way—_oh hell_—

Neji hit the shore hard, hands coming up in the beginning motions of his Kaiten, but their traveling momentum carried them too far forward and the arrows were drawing too close too quickly—_wait, those arrows_! Sakura grabbed Naruto by the shoulder, her head gone abruptly dizzy and the emptiness in her chest spreading like a sickness.

Naruto turned to look at her instead of the front. "Sakura-chan!"

"Move!" she screamed, pushing him to the side, and saw the arrows coming down—like kunai to the chest, the bubbly sensation of breathing, gasping for air—

_I will not die_. The words echoed hollowly in her chest.

The world burst into a fury of wind around her, nearly knocking her flat. She shuddered once, the blank feeling seeping out of her, and groped along the ground, keeping her eyes closed to avoid being blinded by flying dust and dirt; her hand landed on something soft but spiky, which ran into something skull-shaped—Shikamaru's hair?

"Shikamaru?" she asked hastily.

He turned onto his back with effort and looked upward. His eyes widened. "I can't see the clouds," he said.

Sakura gritted her teeth to tell him that no, this was not a time for cloud-watching, and certainly not a time for dumb responses—then glanced up as well, and froze.

It _looked_ human. There were arms, and a helmet over what would be the head, and bony arms crossed before itself; if she looked closely, she could see the arrows embedded along the front. _The front, that's the same side as the back of the hand—ulna, that's it_. The arms and helmet seemed oddly underdeveloped, as if there wasn't enough bone density. Some of the skeleton seemed fit together incorrectly, and it was surrounded by a strange fluid enclosed within a membrane—not like muscle tissue, that wasn't it, but rather like amniotic fluid. _Definitely not fully developed_, Sakura decided.

And then awareness of the situation came flooding back to her; her heart felt like it was beating twice as fast as usual, and where was—? She searched out the area: Kiba there, Neji in the front, Lee and Chouji off to the left—

Naruto ran over to them. "I can see him!" he said furiously. "On the water!"

"That's not specific, Naruto!" Sakura snapped. But she'd seen him too. Out on the water, three figures standing—and one figure kneeling next to the smallest of the group. Hard to recognize at this distance, but she did.

Neji confirmed it. "Big one, spider one, and—" he blinked. The nerves of his Byakugan rippled. "One with two heads. One more next to Uchiha Sasuke, he's the one lying down." He paused again, then added, "It looks like he's been fighting against them."

"I knew it," Naruto said simply. "I knew it." He didn't shout, but he spoke with the air of vindication. "Shikamaru—"

Shikamaru seemed pleasantly surprised that Naruto had remembered he was mission leader. "Lee, Chouji, stay here," he ordered curtly. "Lee's not steady with chakra enough to fight intensely on the water right now, especially after the surgery—Chouji's techniques are less effective on water, it's easier to avoid him by going under water than going under earth. Remaining five, head in—Neji, stay at the back so you can first observe their techniques with the Byakugan before heading in. We're going to try and drive them to the shore so we can take them eight on four."

_There are seven of us here_, Sakura thought. _The eighth_—she glanced out at the lake. He was still there.

"Also," Shikamaru pointed up. "Can you figure it out?"

"Smells like damp fire," Kiba said. "It's dying out. I don't like it."

Neji frowned. "I think it's from Uchiha Sasuke."

"What the hell!" Naruto looked stunned. Sakura felt the same. "He never told us about this," she said slowly. _Then again—I feel like Sasuke-kun hasn't been telling us a lot of things_. "Are you sure? It could be one of the Oto nin's jutsu, trying to trick us."

"We'll figure it out sooner or later," Chouji said. He watched the Oto nin with narrowed eyes. "Lee and I may not work best on the water, but we can deal with it if it turns on us."

"All right," Shikamaru said, exchanging a look with Chouji. "I trust you'll know what to do. Let's head out."

"Shikamaru," Sakura put in quickly, "let Naruto and me deal with the one near Sasuke-kun." _We may not know him as well as we thought—but we know him the best out of all of us. You _know_ this. Don't pull the too-much-emotional-involvement bullshit on us_.

He looked at them for a long moment, then nodded once, twice. "Sure," he replied.

When they ran across the water, the massive skeleton moved with them. Sakura looked up at it one more time before she focused her attention on the small dark figure on the surface of the water. "Naruto," she said out of the corner of her mouth. "They know we're young, and genin, so let them think we're weak."

Naruto looked at her sharply. "Weak?" he said incredulously. "We want to beat them—"

"No!" she retorted. "Bring them to shore. Get Sasuke, and pretend we're giving up ground as we move toward the shore. Lee and Chouji are there."

Naruto dropped his glare. "Okay," he said. "I'll get Sasuke out, you take the other one. I'll come back to help."

"Deal." _I can be very weak_, she thought. _That's something I could pull off fairly well. They don't have to know that I can be strong, too_.

And when they came closer and she saw the shock of red-pink hair, she smiled grimly. _Fancy seeing you again_.

**oOo**

Naruto felt Sakura speed up beside him, then saw her spring at the Oto kunoichi who was holding Sasuke immobile against the water. They went down in a huge splash, before he saw Sakura scramble out and charge her again—

_Sakura-chan can take care of herself_. He knelt down; saw the dark markings along Sasuke's neck, and winced. "Hey, teme, don't tell me the seal's messing around with you again—we've come to help you!"

Sasuke turned his face up, and Naruto sucked in his breath. "Why the _hell_ are your eyes bleeding?" Dried blood was traced along the outline of his eye sockets—as if to prove Naruto's point, Sasuke scowled, wiping at his eyes. It left a streak of blood across the bridge of his nose and trailing into his left temple.

"You here—but—why?" Sasuke muttered. "Why keep coming after me? Not all of you—I don't need your help!"

"Stop talking nonsense!" Naruto pulled him up, trying to ignore the way Sasuke's face went white with pain. "What'd they do to you?"

"My hand," Sasuke said. "My head—goddamn it, stop making me run!"

"Making you _run_?" Naruto asked incredulously.

"Susanoo," mumbled Sasuke. "It won't come…"

Naruto glanced behind. The skeleton was wavering—it came with a crash down to its knees, the ribcage beginning to shudder apart. The stuff surrounding it began to ripple and stream down the sides. "That's _yours_?" he said numbly. "When did—"

"Brother gave it to me. He said—it was our fate—"

"_Fuck_ fate!" Naruto snapped. Sasuke was looking straight ahead, shaking slightly. It unnerved him more than Naruto would ever admit. "Let's get away first, Sakura-chan's waiting on us to hurry!"

This wasn't the way Naruto expected it to go. Sasuke was supposed to get up, flash him a grimace of thanks (because of course the bastard wouldn't smile about it, oh no, not at all), and they would turn around and help fight. Only—Sasuke had already fought, and Naruto didn't dare tell him he shouldn't, but the seal was over Sasuke's face and body, and there was no way Naruto would let Sasuke use Orochimaru's seal—

And Sasuke's eyes were flashing between red and dark gray—the Sharingan didn't look proper either, it looked like blades instead of the three tomoe it should be—and he was trying not to look at Naruto at all, the lame ass, and his eyes—his eyes were bleeding _again_.

"For god's sake, what's wrong with your eyes?" Naruto hissed. "Did they do something to you?"

That was when Sasuke started to laugh. He laughed hysterically, laughed like a dying man gone mad. In that moment Naruto could hear only silence, silence and the sound of Sasuke's awful laughter, before he finally, _finally_spoke and the noise of the waterfall's roaring and of ninja fighting came back into being. "I did it!" he gasped. "I didn't mean to, but I did it—I let it happen! My eyes—my eyes weren't strong enough. He let me think I was killing him—I didn't see—"

"Shut up!" Naruto said harshly, slapping his hand over Sasuke's mouth. "_Shut up_!"

A shower of spray hit them from the left. Naruto jerked around to see Sakura skidding across the surface of the water, pushed back by the Oto kunoichi's wind blast. "Sakura-chan!"

"You two are so slow!" she screamed over her shoulder. "_Move_, you idiots! Now—"

Naruto flung himself and Sasuke out of the way of a looming shadow—out of the way of a shadow-that-once-was, water splashing over them. He scrambled to his feet and saw the covered eyes and ears—_what _are_ those things_? Sakura came running to them, grabbing his sleeve and motioning to the shore. "Come on!" she hissed.

"Doki doki doki," the Oto kunoichi sang, and raised her flute.

* * *

Chapter title from:  
_One thing we can; to be_  
_Awhile, as men may, free;_  
_But not by hope or pleasure the most stern_  
_Goddess, most awful-eyed,_  
_Sits, but on either side_  
_Sit sorrow and the wrath of hearts that burn,_  
_Sad faith that cannot hope or fear,_  
_And memory grey with many a flowerless year_.  
_—_Algernon Swinburne, "To Victor Hugo"

The memory of Sasuke overhearing his father is, on one level, just another instance of memory mix-ups; Sasuke is now aware that he has different sets of memories of a past-future and the current-present, but in the confusion he's connecting what's happening with all of his memories. Which is, possibly, making his hang-up even worse. More importantly, though, I wanted to emphasize how Sasuke remembers his past and takes the worst from it—i.e., remembering as most essential the _attacking is important_ without thinking over the later _attack and defend to protect_ (!) (btw, take this as Fugaku speaking vaguely of the coup plans—what the majority of the Uchiha wanted to protect most was not Konoha, but the clan), and taking away from his interaction with Itachi bitterness at perceived weakness. And Itachi's mention of love makes him instantly think of weakness, and thus being pathetic (return to Sakon's comment to him in the last chapter). He's had years to stew over this, after all.

I was reminded of this when reading Ch. 484 ("Their Team 7"): [Sasuke] "They're all laughing! Itachi is dead so they can stand there laughing! They're laughing because they know nothing!... Your laughter sounds like scorn and disdain to me now! I want to change that laughter to screams and moans!" …

Talk about ex post reality change. O_O

Susanoo is mainly used to surround the user (who is in the center) as far as we've seen in the manga, but I surmise it could be extended beyond the user's immediate proximity, although less effective.

Doki was the term given to Tayuya's summoned demons, reminiscent of the three wise monkeys.

To those who have been so kind as to review, despite my tendency to update infrequently-I really appreciate it. It means more to me than I can put into words. :)


	15. 14: hate is as their loving kindness

Yeah, it's been a while. I have been derailed twice over, once by fandom (lost interest in Naruto for a while and wandered off to other pastures before returning; ngl, still not a huge fan of what's happening in the manga right now), and once by RL (academic studies, y'know).

That said: a very sincere thank you to everyone who has read this and refrained from dismissing it entirely given the last update date (from... two years ago...), and especially to **crimson-rising**, whose insightful comments recently inspired me to get this chapter finished.

I am a little apprehensive—my writing style may have changed over these years (okay, definitely has changed)—so please feel free to let me know what you enjoy and what you find jarring. I appreciate your support. :)

* * *

**14 - their hate is as their loving-kindness**

Sakura saw the kunoichi raise her flute, knew with a firm certainty—"Oh no you don't!" she snapped, even as she twisted around and, in a split second, let her shuriken fly with cold fury. They split the flute like a spliced leaf. _Disarm the enemy_, she thought grimly, and relished the rage that came over the kunoichi's face. There had been a reason the kunoichi had stolen Sakura's kunai to use in the genjutsu—Sakura had guessed, then, that she didn't have any in real life and, relying on ease and familiarity to simulate a fight, hadn't created any in her genjutsu seal. _You gave me information, and gave me the chance to gamble_, she said silently. _Blame yourself for that_. "Naruto!" she said. "How's—"

_Sasuke-kun_, but the name died in her throat as she turned her eyes upon the boy she had admired for so long. Sasuke leaned heavily against Naruto, the curse seal taking root upon the skin of his face like a mass of leering curlicues, the writhing imprint of a cattle brand—and stamped across his eyelids were thick smears of blood. Naruto had his hand covering Sasuke's mouth, but even so she could hear the muffled sounds of trailing laughter threading through his fingers. Sasuke blinked his eyes, his Sharingan rolling about like the eyes of a madman.

For a horrifying, disorienting moment, she thought: _this is not my teammate_. She looked into Naruto's eyes and saw nothing but a dawning dread.

Then reality crashed down upon her with the water spray. The one monster released by the Oto kunoichi had not dissipated yet with the flute's destruction, though it had slowed its speed. It lumbered toward them, the absence of its arms a mark of promised violence.

"Shore," she blurted out, and raced with Naruto across the water. She could feel the kunoichi's chakra behind them, the monster's too—another of the Oto nin broke off from the crowded lake melee of Oto three on Konoha three, his chakra flaring like the heat of firing clay against her back.

"Sakura-chan," Naruto gasped, as they curved around the shore to meet Lee and Chouji, "we gotta put Sasuke somewhere. He's gonna black out—there's something wrong, he was laughing like a maniac—and Sakura-chan, his eyes are bleeding, the Oto nin must've done something to him—"

"Nothing," muttered Sasuke. His voice was raspy, like crinkled paper. "I didn't see—I didn't see you, you shouldn't have been there—"

"Of course we're gonna be here, teme!" Naruto said fiercely. "We're teammates, I'm going where you are!"

Lee tensed and leaped forward to intercept them at the shore. "I will take him," he said, his face strangely solemn. "If he is injured—"

Sakura dared to look back. "Naruto, Kage Bunshin," she said. "There's no time. They're coming. Get them on land. Chouji!"

"I'll take the other one," said Chouji in reply, narrowing his eyes at the approaching Oto nin. "I'm not that fast—but he doesn't look like he is too. Lee hasn't been cleared yet, so—well, it's a matter of strength rather than speed."

She darted a look at Naruto, who was biting his lip anxiously and had yet to declare his fight. "Sasuke can't—I don't think he can fight," he stammered, "but we can't—"

_We can't just leave him here_. That would defeat the purpose of the mission altogether—to take him back to Konoha, rather than become sitting prey for the Oto nin to swipe from under their noses.

Sasuke staggered up with a jerk—he resembled, in his shaking and trembling, a aimless puppet with no puppeteer, and Sakura stared, for she had never seen him so discomposed. His right arm hung limply by his side, she noted—_definitely a break in there somewhere, no time to check_—and he breathed heavily through his swollen nose; bared his teeth as if it still meant anything, useless gesture though it was. With his eyes closed, Sasuke's eyelashes rested against his cheeks like faded brush strokes. "Shut up, dobe!" he muttered. "I can—I can fight. You stay out of this."

"You see?" Naruto hissed under his breath to Sakura. "He's absolutely out of his mind!"

Sakura wanted to object, wished she could object, but the plain and simple truth was that she agreed. _Sasuke-kun_... "Let me and Lee deal with him," she said. "Naruto, take the Oto nin for a moment, okay?"

Naruto opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. "You mean it?"

"'You mean it?'" repeated Sakura, impatience throttling her throat for a moment, her temper snapping under the strain. "'_You mean it_?' Of course I mean it! Do I need to clean your ears out?—god, Naruto! Keep the Oto nin off our backs for a moment and I'll get Sasuke out of the way!"

Naruto's face was forming a hard study in determination. "I'll beat them into the ground and you won't have to worry," he said—"Believe it!"

His hands came together to form the seal of Kage Bunshin.

**oOo**

Susanoo slips through his control like wisps of fog. The blood slips through his eyelashes like raindrops. The water beneath his feet slips to firm dirt, and Sasuke stumbles.

_Those whom we love_, his brother says, his eyes blazing red like venomous flowers, like raw rubies.

"Sakura, what's wrong with his eyes?"

Sasuke laughs, and opens his eyes. The Mangekyou Sharingan takes in his surroundings in a glance, a recorder that will never fail. This is the curse of memory, he recognizes, which will dog him to his grave—he remembers the killings in Tsukuyomi—Itachi and his blank eyes—an orange mask like a mocking whirlpool—the end of it all, and the emptiness in his chest, his heart eaten up by death. His blade, protruding through a spread of orange and black. "Jiroubou," he giggles, "don't you like to be toasted?" and lifts his mangled right hand, the pain shooting up to his elbow like a paralyzing poison. _But that's right_, he thinks, _if I feel pain then I am alive. I am not dreaming. This is truly real._

_I am alive._

_They are alive_.

"Sasuke, stay back!" Chouji shouts, but Sasuke is already moving forward, hears the step of his feet like a death knell. _Amaterasu_, he thinks desperately, _Amaterasu_, but his chakra gasps and flickers—and collapses, draining away the manic giddiness which has infected him and wringing him out like a wet rag. _No_, Sasuke mouths as he crashes to his knees, _not now_—the skin of his face tightens as the seal pulls back, spiraling to the nape of his neck, and a strange itch on his back flares into existence—

"You mess with me, I'll show you _Uzumaki_!" Naruto shrieks, echoed hundredfold by the voices of his clones.

"Lee, you're the fastest of us all," he can hear Sakura's voice ringing about his head. "Take him and go—we're six against four, we'll manage, I promise! But keep Sasuke-kun safe—"

"No!" Sasuke snarls, turns his face up to seek Sakura. "This is my business. I'll kill them all," he adds, the words deathly cold. "I'll kill them all." He nurses the resolution in his heart like a snake, feels his eyes whirring like machine gears—_do this for me_, he forces his Sharingan forward relentlessly, _my eyes cannot fail me_—

"Sasuke-kun—" begins Sakura, but the words tremble with fear. Sasuke can almost see himself reflected in her green eyes, a hazy image spitting with unfocused frustration.

"Are you afraid of me?" he snorts, surging to his feet. "You should be. I could kill you all. Everyone will die in the long run."

Sakura whispers, "Afraid for you... what did the Oto nin do to you, Sasuke-kun?"

He stretches out his hand. "This is nothing." _Think of what I did to the Oto nin, Sakura_, he says silently. _I used fire and lightning and set them ablaze_—_if it weren't for this stupid, slow body, I could've taken them down and left them to Orochimaru's mercy. I could've gone to look for Itachi and come back with him_—

—_and you wouldn't have had to come after me. You wouldn't have had to die_.

"Don't be silly—"

But Sasuke has a knack for insubordination. He darts past Sakura and winds around Lee, who jerks back and is hesitant to stop him—Naruto is bombarding Tayuya with clones, while Chouji thunders into Jiroubou with a dizzying spin, the Akimichi technique grinding him down before Jiroubou rises once more, glowering.

_I will not be this weak again_, he repeats; lopes over to Chouji, whose breath skips and stutters with strain. Chouji, he knows, is always well-prepared; and Chouji doesn't take his eyes off Jiroubou, so no time for him to react as Sasuke reaches out and flips his pouch open. There are spare kunai, and spare shuriken, but—

_There_. Nestled on the side are several colored chakra pills, and Sasuke's mouth twitches into a humorless smile. _Who would make better chakra pills than the Akimichi_? he thinks, and carelessly, thoughtlessly, swallows down the green one—

Chakra rises up in him like fire, stripping away the sensation of muscle and tendon, till he is nothing but crackling bone—he breathes in, heat coating his throat and puffing out as steam. The fire cradles him like a baby, like Susanoo born anew—this is unlike any chakra pill he ever had, he thinks dazedly, _this is power_—_this is strength_—

"Sasuke, you ate the—" Chouji's voice, rising up into a horrified yell, barely breaks through his reverie. He stalks forward like a skeleton, like a dead man resurrected, a second life under the sun—raises his hand and _there_—blasts Chidori Nagashi again at Jiroubou, who bristles and shakes it off like water sliding off his back, but makes the mistake of looking up, looking into Sasuke's bleeding eyes—

_If I am going to hell_, Sasuke says, whether aloud or in his mind, he does not know, and does not care to know—_I am taking you all with me. Tsukuyomi. _And he curls in on himself and lets himself drown.

He paints the sky red, because it had been red, lurid swaths swiping their way past clouds down to the far horizon. The ground, too, is red, gurgling with idle streams of blood that ripple and settle themselves into the barest semblance of a seal. Jiroubou has tensed a few meters away, glaring at Sasuke with beady eyes. "What the fuck kind of jutsu is this?" he hisses.

Sasuke does not smile. He raises his chokuto and places the tip of it at the hollow of Jiroubou's neck—no, he sees now. _Ah_, he thinks. _This was what I should have done. Madara_. "Well now," he says. The pause lingers uneasily for a moment, the world unearthly silent-for no wind whistles, no waterfall roars. Then a crow caws overhead, tearing through the world, and Sasuke knows Itachi is watching—dead, yes, but he is watching, he would be certain to witness the demise of the man who helped kill his clan. "You'll just have to find out, won't you?" And the blade slides in between skin and muscle, parting them like the thin delicate pages of a book. The body trembles. The man cannot scream. Will not scream. Sasuke does not like to hear the screams of the already dead.

(He hears the voices, the murmuring ghosts.)

"Again," Sasuke says. Madara's orange mask remains impassive.

"Again," Sasuke says—

Again, mutating inside the barrel—again, a fight at the Valley of the End—so everything else, will it (not) happen again? Sasuke is too tired to make sense of it. He is in his past, but what good was his future? What good is there to find, beside the deaths of those upon whom he sought revenge? Nothing in Konoha for him, but death; nothing outside of Konoha for him, but death. It is easier, ultimately, to start with what he knows.

"Again," Sasuke says, and twists the blade.

"Sasuke-kun, now you're just being redundant." He glances over and sees the bright crimson splash on the front of Sakura's vest; sees the scar along her right temple; the wink she delivers.

"Hn. Next time, don't come."

"I wonder where Naruto is," she says in a singsong voice. "That Kyuubi jinchuuriki—"

Sasuke stares at the blade, dripping blood from its tip sporadically, reminiscent of a leaky faucet. Back then it had slid in so easily, so quickly. But he had not slid it through Madara.

Twists it again. Blood flies onto the orange mask. "I don't want this," he says, "to be real." _I'll kill them all_, he had said. Rote memorization and recitation of the words by now: they were, after all, so easy to say, and had been so easy to fulfill. Weariness surged over him again, a wash of weakness.

"Oh, oh, oh, whatever do you mean, Sasuke-kun?" Sakura hisses, and when he looks again the corners of her eyes have sharpened and angled down, her tongue flicks out to taste the air, and Orochimaru grins lazily at him, smelling of decaying flesh and gleaming with snakeskin unshed. At his feet, scavenging birds skitter over Sakura's day-old innards, nipping at those which spill out onto the ground. Her heart rests still within her chest, shining jewel-bright.

Sasuke says nothing aloud, but he thinks: _I have already killed them once. And I... am tired_...

He has not allowed himself time for rest in all the years he has been learning, moving, killing. His vengeance is spent. _I have nothing left to give to this new past, _Sasuke says to himself. _It would be easier if_—

He does not know. He twists the blade again. He holds the genjutsu on himself and Madara, and lets it eat his chakra, the fire flowing like a life force into Tsukuyomi and draining Orochimaru's seal dry. _If I kill a thousand times in here_, Sasuke decides, _that will be enough_. And he closes his eyes.

**oOo**

Naruto didn't notice right away—his attention had been utterly focused on the kunoichi, who sneered at him—"Uzumaki? Don't bother with your name, boy, and you don't need mine, you'll be dead before that happens—"

"Yeah, right!" he hollered, and laughed heartily in her face—was tempted to stick out his tongue too, but maybe that was a bit much. "You didn't get us in Konoha, and you got no flute either!"

"I'll kill the girl too," the Oto nin said lowly, and spat, "She shouldn't be alive, that bitch—no one leaves my death genjutsu alive—"

"Call it fail genjutsu!" Naruto cackled—and _ha_! Two clones burst out from underneath and grappled with her, holding her arms, and even as she was kicking out to dispel the one on the left, a third clone bulldozed into her—

She fell back, scowling. And there was something wriggling over her neck—

"No way," he groaned; watched the ink dance over her skin, the horns jut out of her head like sharpened battering rams, her fists clench as she breathed in newly given power. She straightened, and the new rush of knowing superiority glinting in her eyes was no good signal. _Not cool_, he grumbled—swung a kunai around his middle finger and threw it to gauge how she moved now—

She snatched it out of the air like it was a irritating mosquito. "Try again," she taunted, "if you get two out of five I'll be pretty impressed as is—you look like a guy with no brawn _and_ no brains—"

Naruto noticed, then, because he heard Sakura's incomprehensible scream.

He turned his head so fast he could almost feel it vibrating and bobbing on his neck—his shoulder went _crack _under the Oto nin's fist, he spat out blood as he skidded back—"Clones, have at it!" he screamed, and turned his back on his enemy, running lightly upon the water like hell was behind him. Or in front of him, because as his shoulder knitted itself back together and his nin sandals slapped at the lake, he saw—

—Lee and Chouji, holding down the other Oto nin's twitching body and tying him up, as he gibbered and drooled and spoke nonsense—

—Sakura, her hair hiding her face, kneeling next to and desperately shaking—

—Sasuke. Sasuke's body, which in the course of a few seconds had become thin, emaciated—Naruto came closer now, could see Sasuke's collarbone revealing itself under his skin, his ribs thrusting up to show underneath his wet shirt, his eye sockets sinking deep into his head—

"What happened?" he growled, and Sakura looked up, shuddered, and screamed again. "What?" he asked.

Sakura's eyes were round and blindly seeing but uncomprehending, as she stared at him. "N—Nothing," she said. "Naruto—your chakra—"

"Sasuke ate my chakra pill!" Chouji shouted. "It's a special one, he shouldn't have, but he took it and did something to take this Oto nin down—"

"—he won't wake up—" Sakura moaned. She looked as though she were praying over the dead. "Stupid, stupid, stupid Sasuke-kun—"

"Serves him right, the bastard!" the Oto nin sang from behind him, and he turned—too late, too late—

—pushed down to the ground, Naruto felt his face greeting the dirt as an unwanted friend, muddied by water and blood.

"Gotcha," said the Oto nin.

A drop of blood fell on his ear, sliding around the shell and down inside—Naruto shook his head wildly as he leaped to his feet, blond hair pulsing out red like a warning beacon—"Sakura-chan!"

Saw the kunai lodged in her chest, above the heart. She kept her hand over it and didn't pull it out—her brow shiny with sweat, her breath coming through her mouth in harsh gasps. "Naruto," she said, "we—shouldn't give her weapons anymore..."

"Just like last time," said the Oto nin. "You twerps never learn, huh? You're outta your league with us, trash like you—"

"It's all a lie!" Sakura shouted. One hand over her heart, one hand beginning to form _kai_. "It's not real—Naruto, don't worry—Sasuke-kun and I, we won't die!" In her voice he heard nothing but—_fear_, trying to convince herself as much as she was trying to convince Naruto.

Naruto never quite remembered what he had seen in that moment, as time sighed and slowed itself down, as Naruto broke his gaze from Sakura and looked at the kunoichi, really looked at her, even with Sakura and Sasuke overlaying his vision. Sasuke, nothing but bones like a long-dead corpse, and Sakura, bleeding so brightly and freely and saying, _it's all right, Naruto, it's all right_—

_You're lying_, he thought. _Sakura-chan, you're lying_. And saw the Oto nin's face, the whole lot of them, purple ropes tied round their waists like they were presenting themselves to be hanged. _Pathetic, stupid human, she hurt Sakura-chan and the others drove Sasuke crazy and—it's all your fault_, he thought savagely. _Your fault, I'll_—_I'll_—

Deep within Naruto, the Kyuubi stirred languidly, and grinned.

"I'll kill you!" he screamed, unknowingly echoing Sasuke in a time far apart. He could feel the Kyuubi's chakra bursting out over his skin into a blazing cloak of crimson, killing and regenerating his cells all at once—his pupils sharpening to slits, his whiskers deepening and broadening on his face, as he crouched down and _sprang _forward, his heart afire. "I'll _kill you all_!"

* * *

The chapter title comes from:  
_Shall such a one lend love or borrow?_  
_Shall these be sorry for thy sorrow?_  
_Shall these give thanks for words or breath?_  
_Their hate is as their loving-kindness;_  
_The frontlet of their brows is blindness,_  
_The armlet of their arms is death_.  
—Algernon Swinburne, "Ilicet"

This practically describes Uchiha to a T.

When I described Itachi's eyes as "blazing red like venomous flowers," it was a nod to Swinburne's "Dolores":  
_Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel_  
_Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;_  
_The heavy white limbs, and the cruel_  
_Red mouth like a venomous flower_—

Ok, no more Swinburne glee for now.

"_Call it fail genjutsu_!"—okay, so maybe Naruto has to work on those fail comebacks. I couldn't resist. :D

It's mentioned in the Naruto Wiki that Tayuya did not carry kunai on her, because she relied on her flute. It's just her bad luck that Sakura purposefully aimed for her flute instead of her body, the way most of Tayuya's past enemies have (my Watsonian explanation is that the flute is an odd object to have in a battle, odd enough that people would tend to discount it as a trifle in favor of preparing to fight with the usual weaponry-at which point Tayuya would already be gleefully leering at them).

I thought for a while about having Sasuke take apart the Sound Four—not gonna lie, oh the temptation of a major smackdown in the narrative, mwahaha—but then my little voice of reason stuffily told me that, given his mental state re: the final fusion of past!future-present memories, he would hardly be able to take them all on. In the end, I decided to have him contribute to taking care of one, but taking care of that Sound Four member in a way which is... well, all about Sasuke. He's not really seeing you in Tsukuyomi, Jiroubou—sorry, but Sasuke wants to kill other people more (aka Madara). And the idea of truly facing the old past again, with his former future entirely erased (including Itachi's death, his time in Sound, Team 7's fate and all), is frankly a terrifying notion to him. All that pain and effort undertaken, now completely negated. It's mentally paralyzing, and I decided to have Sasuke react by retreating into the familiar: his own universe of Tsukuyomi, where anything goes. The battle at the Valley of the End and the Sound Four there in this new past—to him, it seems like a foreign land entirely, one step removed in his mind.

What a coincidence, one might exclaim, re: Chouji's chakra pills. :P Well, Sasuke never knew about them—and knowing as he does the genin, out of the four at hand (Lee, Sakura, Naruto, and Chouji), it does stand to reason that Chouji would have them. Hehe.


End file.
